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The first line of Jo’s current hit, The Parisian Heist: It’s terrible to be rich.

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Jo’s the creator of Under the Influence (the podcast) and Over the Influence (the Substack) and the national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance, Everyone is Lying to You (KJ’s fave!), We Are Not Like Them, You Were Always Mine, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff (KJ’s other fave!) and How to Be Married but most importantly, her current book, The Parisian Heist, is just out and great for readers and writers alike.

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More about The Parisian Heist:

Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, thought she had left her dreams behind when she took a job cleaning for the city’s wealthy elite. Then she meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. The Swansons move in a world where billionaires, oligarchs, and heads of state pay fortunes for masterpieces. Drawn in by their dazzling wealth and the pull of a dangerously charming grandson, Emma becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes.

In the late 1800s, the young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law Vincent that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, and to secure a future for herself and her young son, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. As her devotion deepens, a vanished painting and a thwarted love affair leave her unsure who she can trust and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.

From glittering auction houses to the idyllic canals of Amsterdam and the grand museums of Paris, the lives of these two women converge as Emma uncovers the Swanson family’s darkest secrets and agrees to mastermind a daring heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. The stakes have never been higher, and these women refuse to be written out of history, no matter the cost.

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She explains choosing a first-person narrative that blends literary criticism, archival discovery, and her own anxiety, including eerie moments in the archive and insights into King’s word-level edits, literary influences, and Shakespearean foundations, especially The Shining’s ties to Hamlet.

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• Monsters in the Archives by Caroline Bicks

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Jennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. Welcome, everyone. This is Margin Notes, the part of the podcast where we’re talking about the big decisions writers face in their work and creative lives.

I’m here today with a super special guest. I’m so excited to speak with Caroline Bicks. She is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, where she teaches courses in Shakespeare, early modern culture, and horror fiction. And she’s the author of all kinds of very cool books ... about Shakespeare, including one on cocktails.

Um, and, uh, is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast, and we are here today to talk with her about her new book called [00:01:00] Monsters in the Archives: A Year of Fear with Stephen King. Welcome.

Caroline: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jennie: So this is gonna be the strangest interview you’ve probably ever done. I

Caroline: don’t know.

Because- I’ve talked to a lot of people around the world about this Stephen King book.

Jennie: I couldn’t read your book. I, I couldn’t read it. I can’t read horror. Yeah. Which listeners of this podcast are gonna laugh about, ‘cause I’m actually coaching someone live and they’re writing gothic horror, and they’re probably like, “All you talk about is horror, Jennie.”

But, um, it’s actually the reason why I wanted to talk to you, because you made a decision in the writing of this book that I thought was super cool. Mm. Which was you put yourself in it.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jennie: And you’re a scholar.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jennie: And you’ve written scholarly books, and you approach this with a scholarly perspective, but you, you really put yourself in it.

And, and so [00:02:00] I was reading it for that part of the story and I had to skip over huge chunks of, of the, of the work. Because what you’re doing in this book is you’re getting at this question of- W- what, what is scary in writing? Like, how does it actually work? How does it act- what is the magic or the function that makes us feel this thing?

And you actually feel it yourself while you’re going through it, and I found it quite terrifying actually. So, um, that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about is how did you make the decision? Well, first of all, you were the first person, I wanna make sure I get this right, ‘cause this is very cool. Yeah. You were the first person who was invited to the archives, the Stephen King archives.

Caroline: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a bit of a story, so I won’t spend too much time on it, but just the mo- Oh, no, do. It’s good ... when I ch- when I took this position... So I’ve been a Shakespeare professor my whole adult life, ba- as soon as I graduated from grad school in the late ‘90s, [00:03:00] and I was at Boston College for 15 years.

I took this position at University of Maine nine years ago as a Shakespearean. Um, so it is an endowed chair in Stephen King’s name because he’s our most famous alum. So when I took the position, I, it was because I’m a Shakespearean, not because I’m a horror specialist. Um, I had always been a Stephen King fan since I read him when I was 12, and he scared the beje- Jesus out of me, um, with The Boogeyman story.

Jennie: Right.

Caroline: Um, so when I took this position though I was told, “You’re never gonna meet Stephen King. Don’t even make contact with him.” I’m like, “Fine, you know, this is still a great job. I’m excited.” Um- Thanks

Jennie: for the money. Yeah.

Caroline: Thanks for... You know, no, it’s a wonderful fund. It was funded by the Harold Alfond Foundation, and it’s to support the public humanities, which is an incredible mission.

So, um, I get to give money away to people. You know, it’s a great, great position, but I was not a horror specialist. And particu- a- and as an adult, I actually wasn’t reading horror because it scares me too much. You know? Yeah, yeah. Um, but it had grabbed me when I was a teenager. So it was about four years into the [00:04:00] job when I got a call at home from Stephen King, which just, uh, uh, my jaw hit the floor.

And he said, “You know, I think it’s time we meet.” I’m like, you know, I, I really fan-girled because I really, I have so much admiration for him and respect. Um, I invited him to come talk to our students. He was brilliant, generous, funny, kind, and I felt so at ease that I felt like I could ask... You know, and I got to know him professionally.

We had a good professional relationship that developed from there. When I had a sabbatical year coming up the next year- I could have written another Shakespeare book. I had another one in my head. I’ve written a bunch of them but I knew that he and Tabitha had just collected all of his manuscripts and put them in a climate-controlled space attached to their home in Bangor, and I thought, “You know, this is an incredible opportunity.

I would love to dig in there and be the first one in there, and just read those early drafts of the books that scared me so much when I was a teenager, and try to just explore why. Why were they sticking in my head still?” Um, again, I am not a specialist in... I’m not a cognitive scientist. I’m not a [00:05:00] specialist in horror literature, but I’m obviously highly trained in how to do literary analysis and how to do archival work, not Shakespeare, because we don’t have any of his works, but, you know, I, I understand what that process is.

So back to your question about why I wanted to bring myself into it, which was, you know, I had been experimenting with first-person storytelling after I got tenure. You know, ‘cause it’s a long process, Kate. Right. And most of my writing had been academic writing, but I really had always loved storytelling And I got a piece into the Modern Love column.

I started to have some success with publishing my first-person stories, and I was like, “You know, I love this.” So when I had this opportunity to go into his archives, they generously said yes, was amazing. I thought, “You know, I really wanna tell this story. I don’t wanna write an academic book. I want this to be the story of a literature scholar, but really the story about a scared kid.”

Jennie: Yeah.

Caroline: You know, you, you never lose that scare, you know, I don’t... This is the thing. Fear has stuck with me with those stories [00:06:00] for 40 years. So I was fascinated, and I just wanted to understand how he had crafted the language so that it was sticking in my head still. Because when I was talking to people around, you know, whenever you mention Stephen King to people, you know, if they’ve read him, they remember specific lines and specific words, and I was like, “That’s an extraordinary, um, 50 years on to have that power.”

So, um- Well- Anyway. Yeah. Go ahead. I, I could talk about this forever, so you tell me- Oh, no, it’s- ... where you wanted to pick up from this.

Jennie: It’s so good. Well, I have to tell you this funny anecdote, which is that my college roommate was from Bangor, Maine, and babysat his kids in that house.

Caroline: Oh, that’s insane.

Jennie: So when I went to visit her, she drove me by that house.

There you go. And I was like, “Oh, hell no- Yeah ... would I ever babysit in that house.” Like, it’s-

Caroline: It’s ‘cause it’s like a gothic, it’s like straight out of Haunting of Hill House ...

Jennie: actually, and like these spiderweb gates that, and you describe that in the [00:07:00] book and, and the- Yeah ... archives are in that house. They’re

Caroline: in the house.

They’re attached to the back. I know. And it, it was so, it was, it was insane. It was like a full-on 360 experience writing this book. Um, and I, I knew, like, so I did the research for a year. I didn’t even know if this would be a book. I just knew I wanted to have the opportunity to be in there because it, I knew it was a great opportunity, and I was so curious, you know?

Yeah. So I, I came out of the year with just tons of notes and observations, but I didn’t have a book, you know? Yeah. And then I started experimenting with writing a chapter, and I just, the storytelling just came forward and then when I got an agent and she, you know, s- I, I, I was able to get a contract based on a proposal and that one chapter I had written and I was really fortunate to have a fabulous editor, David Ebershoff, at Hogarth, who is just such a wonderful writer himself, and he really encouraged me to bring my voice in and bring my story in even [00:08:00] more.

Um, so that’s- And- ... that’s the story of that.

Jennie: Was it hard for you as a scholar to do that?

Caroline: You know what? It was so freeing and so fun that it actually wasn’t, you know? Because I, I knew this wasn’t going to be an academic book, so once I let go of that- Yeah ... um, I was like, wow, I have the, and yet I have this skill set I can bring forward, and I knew that’s what would make this unique.

Um, but I can combine my two favorite ways of writing, ‘cause I do actually love writing literary criticism. Like it’s, I get a thrill out of it. I wouldn’t be doing it this long if I didn’t get a thrill out of it, but I also love telling my own stories and drawing a reader in. And so for me it was like just a circus carnival.

Like it was so fun to be able to do it. Once I had the permission and I had a contract, I was like, fine, you know? I, I, who am I writing this book for? I’m writing it for me, you know? Like this is just something I wanna do because I’m so passionate [00:09:00] about it and I, and I love Stephen King. And, um, once I got into it that way and wasn’t thinking about who’s gonna criticize me for this, like how will academics view this, I was like, I don’t care.

I just don’t care. I know I’ve got a great story to tell that people are gonna love to read because there’s so many people that love not just Stephen King, but people who love reading about how great books get written, you know? Yeah. And so that was the audience I had in my mind when I, when I was crafting it.

It was really, in my mind, anybody who cares about books and writing. It doesn’t have to be... So when you say, you’re not the first person who’s said to me, “I can’t read your book,” or, “I can’t read-” Oh, I’m so glad. “... Stephen King books,” you know, and I’m like, “That’s okay. You can skip, you know, the parts that really scare you,” because there’s plenty about just like that first chapter I wrote about Pet Sematary, just his sticky notes back and forth with his copy editor, which is so fun I think.

You know, it’s just like, wow.

Jennie: Totally. Yeah. But the thing that you do is you- Allow yourself to confront that fear-

Caroline: Yeah ...

Jennie: [00:10:00] that, that I feel that the people can’t, that can’t read horror feel. You know, anybody that even allows themselves to be scared feels. And-

Caroline: Yeah ...

Jennie: and you, you do some very specific things, um, which I, I found fascinating, including tracking down on eBay the original copy of that book you read as a- Yeah, I wanted-

as a teenager.

Caroline: Yeah, that was part of the process for me, was I wanted to make sure I was reading... So before I would go into the archives for each work, and I’d spent like two... I only picked five, because I wanted to... First of all, I knew I wanted to make this personal. Um, and those were the five that scared me the most when I was a teenager.

So I grew up in the ‘70s and the ‘80s as a teenager, so for me, it was in real time when the books were coming out practically. So it was- Yeah ... Carrie, Night Shift, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary. Um, I’m forgetting one of course. Uh, but I went -

Jennie: The other one.

Caroline: The other one. Had a huge impact on me. [00:11:00] So it was those five, and I, I knew those were the ones I was gonna do a deep dive into, and that I wanted to really re-engage with, and bring my whole self to.

So I wanted to find the copies that I had read in the ‘70s and the early ‘80s. And fortunately, it’s pretty easy to find them. Uh, so yeah, but eBay sometimes I had to go on, or go into a used bookstore and, you know, find the like actual 1979 paperback, you know.

Jennie: Um- I mean, that- Um ... I just, there’s some, there’s so much to say about that because-

Caroline: Yeah

Jennie: like, I just, um- We, we just had a new bookcase built, um, which is something I’ve wanted to do well for eight years in this house. But it’s a thing I’ve always wanted to have, which is like a grand bookcase, and it just was finished last week, and we had all the books packed up in storage, and we brought all the books back.

Then we went through this discernment process of what goes [00:12:00] on those shelves. And I, you know, I had all those books from when I was a kid, even when I was a kid-kid, and they’re yellow, and moldy and falling apart, and the covers aren’t on, and they’re taped and-

Caroline: Yeah ...

Jennie: eh, but I cannot let them go-

Caroline: Yeah ...

Jennie: because those...

that was the object.

Caroline: That’s the object. This is what I feel sad for kids now, because they’re not gonna have those same memories, um, of books. Yes. You know? And I don’t think they stick in your head the same way if you don’t have the full sensory embodied experience with a book.

Jennie: Right. You know? Even when you open...

I read on Kindle, which I love for so many reasons. Yeah. But you don’t even see the cover.

Caroline: You don’t see the cover, right. And for me, it’s so much. Like, I remember going to the Scholastic Book Fair and being like- Yes ... “I’m getting Summer of My German S- Soldier because Christy McNichol’s on the cover,” you know?

Yes. Yes. So yeah, that was part of the journey for me was I did wanna just [00:13:00] reconnect with those books again, try to h- and as much as you can, you know, reexperience the feelings of f- like The Shining, I actually... the only one I still have from 1977 is the actual Shining that I read. Um, and that’s, for me, that woman in room 217.

Well, I know you haven’t read it ‘cause you’re probably... What? But, um, it, that particular one I still have from, from when I was growing up. Um, and I love that I still have it, and it still has the photo... You know, it’s the version that has the photo inserts that includes the Kubrick film photos. Oh, okay.

Jennie: Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Caroline: And I read it before I saw the film, so I remember being- 15 reading it and then seeing the pictures and being like you know? And that’s part of the experience, but it wasn’t, it’s different than seeing the film, you know? And I really, I wanted to write this book as a love letter to language and to books, and not to film.

Like, there’s, that’s a whole other category I think that enters people’s brains in totally different ways. It’s a very different experience. For me it’s about, like going back to your original question [00:14:00] about like why, why, why do stories cause fear, and like what’s the value perhaps in that? Yeah. That was something I came to after this long journey really, and talking to people and thinking about why.

And also by understanding and reading more about Stephen King’s books and talking to him about them, and realizing for him how much these stories are rooted in personal experiences or fears of grief and loss. And- Yes ... that was really profound for me. And like The Night Shift, which is the ur-text that I start with, ‘cause that’s the one I read when I was 12, and that’s his first collection of short stories.

It came out in 1978. It’s 20 short stories. But he ends it with a story about his mother dying, and it’s, I mean, it’s thinly veiled autobiography. It’s about a man who’s watching his mother die in the hospital. Um, but it’s clearly a mirror of his own experience losing his mother when he was 26. And I’m like, wow, what’s that doing in a collection of horror stories?

[00:15:00] And it’s like, what? ‘Cause that is of course, at least for me and I think for a lot of people, that’s the core fear we first have, is that where’s mommy, right? Yeah. Right? You lose the person who’s in charge of taking care of you, and if you’re lucky, does it well and with care. Um, but even if it’s not, like Carrie, you know, the more I was looking through the Carrie drafts, I was like, right, he’s really homing in on Carrie calling out for her mother even though her mother’s terrible and abusive to her, right?

So it’s, there’s just this, I don’t know. It’s a long way around to say I think horror, and he writes about this really eloquently, is a way for us to metabolize our deepest fears. Um, and to look at trauma not head-on but sideways. Um, and he writes about that, um, a number of different places in a really powerful way.

He’s just such an extraordinary human. You know, he’s been thinking about this and for so long.

Jennie: Yeah. Yeah. So, so your willingness to [00:16:00] confront that, those particular fear, fears in your own self and on behalf of the reader, really puts you in it. I mean, like you, there’s a really lovely moment where you are reading I think it’s, I think it’s Pet Sematary, reading the actual book, and you have to turn it over so you- Yeah

don’t see, like on your nightstand so you don’t see the cover. I’m

Caroline: scared, I’m scared of the cover, right, still.

Jennie: Yeah.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jennie: And then there’s moments, se- several where you’re driving And you’re sort of holding your breath while you drive past a place that he writes about or, or- Mm-hmm ... you know, um, well you have to tell the story, I’m sure every interviewer asks you about the, um, the doorknob in the archive.

You have to, like, I was-

Caroline: Yeah, not too many people have asked me about that, but I’m like, that to me was the scary moment-

Jennie: Wait, shut up ... the most, the

Caroline: most sturdy. I’m like, wh- uh, why did that happen? But of course, I mean, there’s a reason why it happened. It’s, it’s, it [00:17:00] automatically locks if, you know, the, if you- Okay

don’t lock it So let’s, let’s play- So but it just happened that we were inside the archive room. It was me and, and Julie Ugli, who is their assistant, who was helping me through this whole process. And I know, and I was, like, literally holding the first page of the first draft of The Boogeyman, the story that had scared me so badly when I was 12, about a monster that comes out of closets, and we’re like in this room.

And the, the archive room, it actually, it almost feels like a closet. It’s not huge at all. You know, it’s just-

Jennie: Yeah ...

Caroline: top to bottom, ceiling to floor stacked shelving with, you know, boxes of materials. And yeah, and we were in there, and I’m holding the first page, and the lock closes on its own. It just goes...

And I’m like, I’m looking at Julie, I’m like, “What is, what’s happening?” We don’t have our cell phones with us. I’m like, “Are we stuck in here? Like, what’s gonna happen?”

Jennie: In the scary archive- In this, I was terrified ... in the back of the scary house. Like-

Caroline: I know, I know. It was like, you can’t make this stuff up.

That’s why I was like, I [00:18:00] couldn’t wait, when I finally got a chance to write the book and sit down and write, I was like, I can’t wait to tell these stories, because they just... I, I’m not a fiction writer. Like, I, I have such mad respect for- I don’t know about that ... well, I’ve m- We’ll see I don’t know. I have mad respect for people who can write fiction.

For me, I only can write what I know and exper- So I’m like, ah. But these stories were just so amazing. Or like when I was reading The Shining, like the first draft of The Shining, which is crazy. I mean, it’s so different from the published version. And like getting to the woman in room 217, and like reading th- and literally my head w- like I thought I was having a stroke.

Like it was like, like... And it’s like, and then I find an interview where Stephen King writes about how he was scared to go back to that scene when he was revising it, the book, because he was dreading it. And I was like, oh, my God, have I just like had some kind of telepathic experience with Stephen King?

Like- Right ... across time, space, and yeah, it was amazing.

Jennie: Well, yeah. I mean, [00:19:00] it’s just, um, uh, I actually made myself go through the whole book skipping giant chunks.

Caroline: I feel so badly I put you through this.

Jennie: I know. I, I feel like why, I kept saying, “Why? Why did I think this was a good idea?” Um, and it- I mean, even just tangentially, I, I don’t know.

It’s interesting. I have, I’m sure you have this too, anybody who reads a lot or spends a lot of time with words, you have a capacity to sort of pay half attention, if that makes sense.

Caroline: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: Um, like you c- could sort of look at it without letting it all the way in. Yeah. But I, I just was, I just was riveted by the thread of, of your story and your putting yourself through that as a scholar and a human.

But, but then some really cool things happen, and I, and I have flagged, um... Do you, [00:20:00] w- would you mind reading a tiny piece? It’s- No, not at all ... it’s on page 82, and it’s the p- the paragraph that starts, “These manuscripts.”

Caroline: Yeah.

Jennie: That would be amazing.

Caroline: Absolutely. So this is actually the moment I just described to you, where my head was like, I got...

Oh, actually, I had just discovered the last 150 pages of the original Shining manuscript in a random folder in the archives, and I was like, “What is this doing here?” And I was getting obsessive about the manuscripts at this point, clearly- Yeah. Yeah ... just like the main character in The Shining, Jack Torrance, who gets obsessed with the manu- with the papers in the basement of the Overlook Hotel.

But here we go. “These manuscripts are definitely getting into my head, and not just its rational part. In his memoir, when King describes books as being a uniquely portable magic, he doesn’t specify what kind of magic. What if manuscripts can absorb and store more than just ink and words? [00:21:00] What if their pages can pass on dark energy along with dark stories?

Ghosts have more than one way of making sure their stories are heard, of ensuring that the past is not forgotten, but rather pressed into our minds, even if we wrench our heads off the pillow and refuse to listen.” And that last is a reference to my, I used to see a ghost when I was five, and I write about that in the book too.

Jennie: I mean, when I read that, I was like, “That’s, that’s me.” Like, these ghosts and horrors are pressing themselves into my mind, and I’m refusing to listen, and they still, they still do. And, um, King’s stories in particular are so iconic, you can’t really escape them. Like, you, you know the scenarios, you know the characters, you know-

Caroline: Yeah

Jennie: you know. And, and so it was interesting for me reading this book that that described my [00:22:00] experience where I was both repelled and magnetized at the same time.

Caroline: That’s beautiful the way you just put that. I mean, I think that is exactly our relationship also, of course, to our own fears. You know, again, what makes these stories endure, and I didn’t go into this book thinking like, “This is a book about promoting Stephen King,” and, you know- Right

like, I don’t work for Stephen King. I just want to put that out there. Right. He, you know, he graciously agreed to let me go into the archives. He’s been very generous about answering all my questions I had about the manuscripts, but he never at any point was like, “You can’t say this,” or, “This is how you’re supposed to say this.”

So, but what I came away with after this process was exactly what you’re describing, why we need these stories, why they endure, actually, is because they tap into our very real human fears. It’s not about the monsters. It’s about the grief and loss that’s coming for all of us if we live long enough, you know?

So you, and you have to at some point confront that, you know? So if it’s- Yeah ... you can [00:23:00] try to run away from it, but it’s coming, and that’s part of being human. That’s the human experience, obviously. Not to be glib, but it’s like-

Jennie: Yeah ...

Caroline: you will experience loss. You will experience grief. And if these stories help you metabolize that or have a cathartic experience with that feeling without having to actually experience your worst fear, right?

Um, like Aristotle says, it’s cathartic, right? It’s you watch a play, a, a tragedy because you experience a catharsis.

Jennie: And did you, did you get to that in your own process?

Caroline: That’s a really good question. Um- You know, I, I think I became more aware of it. You know, I am, you know, and I write about this very openly in the book, that I was an extremely anxious little kid, um, which is part of why I think the boogeyman triggered me in the particular way it did, you know.

Um, and that I grew into a pretty [00:24:00] anxious adult, you know? Yeah. I think anxiety is one of those things that, you know, I... Again, I was born in the ‘60s, so we didn’t have this language for this back then. Like, my parents wouldn’t have known to call me an anxious child, you know? Right. They probably would’ve said, “Oh, she’s shy,” or, “She’s whatever.”

Um, so I think I, you know, like, and I as an adult, I think I’ve, I’ve found ways to manage it pretty well, but I am definitely a control freak. Like, that’s part of how I manage it. I shouldn’t use that language, but you know, it’s like I, I like to just control what I can control, and that makes me feel that I can put the anxiety at bay.

So I will say I think it’s been interesting for me, Nick, now when I have those moments that are my worst fear moments that sometimes still will creep up on me just even though when I think I’ve figured it out, like doom s- doom scenarios. I tend to go to doom scenarios. So, like, if I can’t reach... Uh, I will say Life360 has been, like, the best invention on the planet for me-

with my two kids [00:25:00] and my husband. I’m like, “I know exactly where everyone is.” Yeah. It has saved me a lot of worry. Sometimes Life360 doesn’t work, or sometimes a person still doesn’t answer the phone, and then I have to manage my anxie- And then it’s like... So I will say it’s been interesting going through this process and having to confront or revisit the core of what scares me and, like, why that impacts, you know, why certain moments come forward for me still.

So I think, yeah, I think it has helped me to a degree. Like, I can recognize it more clearly now. I’m like, “Oh, right, that’s why I’m scared of that,” you know? Um-

Jennie: That’s so cool.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jennie: And it feels like that’s the, the, um, the transformation in the book is you’re exploring how that actually works and the language and the stories.

Mm-hmm. But you’re, you’re also exploring how it works in your own self, how it did when you were young, how it does now- Yeah ... these moments when you’re scared. So it- Mm-hmm ... there’s such [00:26:00] a depth to it and, I mean, I just, uh, even in my half reading of it, I just loved it. Thank you. And, um, there’s something that happens That’s kind of crazy, which is, so you’re a Shakespeare scholar

Caroline: Mm-hmm

Jennie: And I ha- I, I know from reading Steve, a- about Stephen King, from reading his book On Writing, of course, and, um, interviews and such that, uh, I’m, I’m probably gonna say this in a disrespectful way, and I don’t mean it to be so, but the, the easiest way I can describe it is that he’s always had sort of a chip on his shoulder that he’s just a popular writer and not taken seriously in a literary way.

Mm. I don’t know if that’s, if that is fair to say, but that’s how I’m saying it. Uh,

Caroline: yeah.

Jennie: And, um, what, what I found incredible was that [00:27:00] here comes this Shakespeare scholar into his archives doing proper scholarly archiver, arch- archival work, and there’s this moment when you begin to see Shakespearean themes in his, in his work, and you can’t ignore it, and particularly in, in Carrie and- Yeah

particularly around exactly the thing you were wrestling with, which is like a young girl’s- I don’t know, sense of, of not being fitting in the world or, um-

Caroline: Yeah ...

Jennie: right? And so that, um, there’s, on page, since you have the book in your hand, um, I think it’s page

Caroline: 202. Mm-hmm.

Jennie: And it refers back to that passage you just read about portable magic.

It’s the one that’s I remembered.

Caroline: [00:28:00] Right. Okay. So this is going back to when I first was, um, I was in the final round of the job for the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, and I was working on a book about Shakespeare’s, the girls in Shakespeare’s plays and world and teenage girls and their cognition.

Like, the how were people during Shakespeare’s day thinking about girls’ brains? Yeah. So I’d been working on this for 10 years. Um, and then I was getting ready to give my job talk. This was the first time Stephen King and Shakespeare came together for me, and it was getting ready, and this, again, this is an authentic story, like write what you know.

So I was getting ready for the job talk. I remembered that King’s 1974 novel, Carrie, featured a 16-year-old girl whose telekinetic powers are unleashed when she gets her first period in the school shower. I started rereading it, and within a few pages came across an uncanny phrase. When she’s walking home after being dismissed early, Carrie feels her brain flexing in a new way, [00:29:00] as if her powers have been waiting below the surface for her to reach, quote, “mental puberty.”

I couldn’t have wordsmithed this dynamic cognitive change better myself. In the last part of my job talk, I used the phrase to connect the brain work of Juliet Capulet, who’s described as being two weeks away from seeing the change of 14 years, to Carrie’s newly activated adolescent mind. It felt like a moment of pure portable magic between Stephen King, Shakespeare, and me.

Jennie: Ugh, so beautiful.

Caroline: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that was just so gobsmacking. Like, when that happened, I was like, I ca- I can’t believe it, but yeah.

Jennie: And then, now I may be getting some of the things wrong here, but then you- You realize, is it Carrie that, that you realize he was, you thought he was emulating a play, a Shakespeare play?

Caroline: I think you’re thinking of Shining. I mean, definitely at the end of the Carrie [00:30:00] chapter I return to, I did notice echoes of Macbeth, and I was convinced that that must have been what he was thinking about. And, and what’s funny is, so one of the conversations I got to have with him, I mean, he’s so generous with his time, one of my last conversations with him was about the end of Carrie, and that’s a book that he actually doesn’t like very much.

You know, it was his first published novel, he was 26, and he’s like, “I think that was written by a young man who thought he knew more than he did.” So he’s, it’s not a book that he goes back to. He recognizes it’s important, and it’s important to him, but, ‘cause it started his whole career, his whole trajectory.

Um, but he didn’t particularly, he hasn’t returned to it. Yeah. So that was a fun chance for me to sort of talk to him and say, “Hey, you know what? I think you should maybe go back,” ‘cause it’s it’s, there’s a lot of Shakespeare in there. Anyway, but the Shining chapter, what was fascinating, so there’s this first draft, which I, I write a lot about, called The Shine, that’s in the archives, with a totally different ending.

Um, and when I looked at it, [00:31:00] he’d also divided it into acts and scenes, like Roman numeral acts and little- Mm ... Roman numeral scenes. And I was like, “This, what is this? This is like a Shakespeare play.” Like, that’s what it looked like. And then sure enough, I found out he was imagining, he was thinking of a Shakespeare tragedy when he wrote The Shining.

And that was the first moment where I was like, “What? This is insane.” Like, this- Yeah ... like, ob- obviously that became, for me, the story I wanted to tell about that particular set of manuscripts, was sort of uncovering, like, what’s the Shakespeare play? Like, what’s the tragedy? And I didn’t wanna ask him because I didn’t want- I wanted to go in with my mind clear, like, of any outside influence.

I just wanted to see what my Shakespeare brain, because I’m so embedded in Shakespeare. I also have a Shakespeare podcast I do with my best friend. Like, we’re, I’m always thinking about Shakespeare and how it relates to everyday life. You know, and so I’m like, “Well, how does it relate to The Shining?” Which is, like, an ur-American text.

Like, this, like, say what you want about horror, [00:32:00] like- I’d be shocked if people don’t know what The Shining’s about, even if they haven’t read it even if they haven’t seen the film. Like, you probably know something about The Shining, right? Right. So I was like, if there’s a Shakespeare tragedy at the foundation of this, you know.

And here’s the thing about Stephen King that I came to learn, again, reading all of his notes and finding these edits, and I did find traces of Macbeth in the first draft of The Shine, um, that he ended up taking out. So I was like, “Oh, is it Macbeth? It feels like it could be Macbeth.” There’s so many things it has in common with it, with hallucinations and with baby bashing.

And, you know, all of these horrible things that are in Macbeth are certainly in that book. Um, but I really wanted to go in, like, just on an adventure, like, see what I saw. So I didn’t ask him which chi- tragedy until I was fully done with all my research and I felt like I had it all done. And that’s when he drops that he was thinking of Hamlet.

And once he said that, of course, it became so ... I mean, I [00:33:00] had seen traces, there were references to Ophelia that also didn’t make it into the final published draft. So you wouldn’t know this. This is the beauty of archival work, like you’re gonna see things that other people will never know about unless you tell the story.

That’s why I felt so passionate about this. Like, “I need to tell people-” Yeah ... “that Ophelia was in the first draft, that he was thinking of Ophelia.” ‘Cause of course, you know, again, even if you don’t know The Shining, the woman in the tub, the woman in the bathtub, like a drowned woman in a tub, like ah, Ophelia.

Yeah. Like Ophelia’s another one of those ur, like she’s so, she’s such a part of our cultural air, right? I mean, like no matter what country you’re in. Right. There’s a reason Taylor Swift has a whole, you know, song The Fate of Ophelia. Like people know what that means. Um, so I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is, this is incredible.

This is even deeper than I thought it was gonna be.” Um, but also it made me appreciate how much that book is about intergenerational trauma. Um, and it’s not ... So he doesn’t like the Kubrick film [00:34:00] for reasons that, you know, a couple different reasons. One is that it flattens out the character of Jack Torrance, and Jack Torrance is an abused child himself, and he passes on that abuse to his son, Danny, right?

Um, but you wouldn’t know that from Kubrick’s film. While Hamlet, of course, is about a father’s ghost coming forward. Like, “The past is a ghost,” King writes, which is so f- powerful, right? Um, here’s this ghost saying, “You need to kill for me.”

Jennie: Yeah.

Caroline: Yeah. And that’s what happens to Jack. Yeah, so anyway, that’s a long way to say that was

Each chapter was my favorite in different ways, but that one I loved being able to do the deep Shakespeare dive.

Jennie: And was that ... You know, so I started that question by saying I, I had heard or understood or maybe inferred that, um, you know, King himself had this sort of desire- Okay ... to be taken more seriously.

Was that, that must have been, I don’t know, powerful for both you and him, uh, to [00:35:00] come to that? Not like, “Oh, you’re the only person that’s ever made him feel that way” or-

Caroline: Yeah,

Jennie: no,

Caroline: I agree ... or agree with that, but. Like I, yeah. And, um, I mean, I will say I think part of the reason he was always really ... I mean, first of all, he’s just so generous, and any writer who’s ever worked with him has the same experience.

Like he just gives his time. He just loves writing and writers so much that he will just, he’ll just t- like any email I would send him, he’d write back in like an hour with a response. The part about how he feels about academia, you know, and I never directly asked him that because I didn’t wanna ... You know, if he wanted to bring it up, great.

But I think- Yeah ... my, after going on this journey with him, he clearly loves talking about- literature. He’s the most well-read person I’ve ever met. I’m just gonna say that hands down. Like, the guy reads- Really? ... cons- constantly and if you read his early works, like even when he was 17, he wrote The Long Walk, okay, which just came out as a film, [00:36:00] and in that, he’s citing T.S.

Eliot, he’s cit- he’s citing Poe at 17. Okay? So he’s, he, he, this, he comes by this honestly. He’s not just trying to seem smart. Like, he literally is constantly reading and it’s clear when you read his manuscripts or when you read his published books, he’s making references to all, whether it’s Shirley Jackson or Wallace Stevens or, you know, uh, he’s so capacious in his knowledge of literature.

And, like, just a couple months ago, he sent me an email, I don’t, I can’t remember, we were talking about something about Salem’s Lot, and he was like, “Yeah, when I was writing Salem’s Lot,” which again, this is 1975 when he’s writing Salem’s Lot, so that’s a long time ago. He’s like, “I was really into James Dickey’s poetry.”

Jennie: Whoa.

Caroline: You know, who was an American no, you know, poet laureate. Uh, he’s like, “And I was reading everything I could read of, of his and then I read Deliverance, and then I went back to his poetry, and that really impacted how I wrote the chapters [00:37:00] about the Lot,” which if you’ve read Salem’s Lot, has some very lyrical, poetic chapters about the town, like, “The town knew about darkness.

The town had its secrets and knew how to kept it.” And then he, like, sends me the entire poem that he was thinking about that James Dickey wrote. So I mean, it’s, he’s, and it’s not performative. He’s not, like, he has nothing. He doesn’t need to prove anything to me, you know?

Jennie: Right, to anyone, yeah.

Caroline: He just literally loves, he loves literature.

Like, this guy, he loves poetry. I mean, he actually writes poetry. He wrote poetry as an undergraduate. Uh, it was actually the core start for him of The Stand, was a poem he wrote called The Dark Man one day when he was, like, hungover in the school, like, cafeteria. Like, so it’s like he, he’s been thinking about literature and living with literature and, uh, since he was a teenager, if not earlier.

His mom brought him, uh, Bram Stoker out of the public library when he was nine, so I mean, the guy- Whoa ... ‘cause he asked for it. He asked for Dracula. [00:38:00] I wasn’t reading Dracula when I was nine. Were you? I mean-

Jennie: No,

Caroline: no. I was reading Little House on the Prairie. I mean-

Jennie: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Wow. So- I mean, this book, again, it’s called Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Carolyn Bicks.

It’s just incredible, whether you’re a King fan, whether you’re a horror fan, um, but for sure for all writers, which are all our listeners. If you can, if you can bear it.

It’s very specific, um, a very specific- specific exploration of, of how good writing works really. Yeah. Right. And, and how you... You know, there’s always that perennial question of how do you get emotion on the page? How do you make your reader feel something? And you, you show it very specifically, and I wanted so badly [00:39:00] to, to get into the details, and I, and I, I just, I just couldn’t.

Um, maybe someday, but, um, I just, I just can’t recommend it enough for, for, um, this audience and, um, you know, anyone who’s interested in any of these things we’ve talked about.

Caroline: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I will say, like, the Pet Sematary chapter, which is the first one, that was the first day I was in the archives.

One of the things I discovered about him day one was how much attention he pays to word sounds. So I think for any writer interested in sort of doing a deep dive into, like, how one word change, right- Yeah ... can make a difference, you know? Yeah. And I didn’t appreciate that about his writing until I went in there and saw his notes to the copy editor where he’s like, “Nope, the word’s clitter, not clatter.

This is why.” You know? Like,

Jennie: he’s- There’s a, um- Yeah ... yeah, there’s a book I love, it’s probably right behind me, um, called The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, in which she [00:40:00] shows examples of that kind of very careful change in, um, The Gre- The Great Gatsby and The English Patient and various works of, of literature, and your, your whole book is like that.

It’s, it’s just amazing. Um- Thank you ... so is the next book gonna be the Shakespeare one you had thought of before? Or are you gonna- ... go in the, in the personal direction?

Caroline: You know, it’s such a good question. I think right now I’m just taking a break, you know, because I’m the kind... Like, I immerse myself in a project, and this has been so all-consuming.

Um, and I’m back to doing my Everyday Shakespeare podcast, which I love and I missed. Um, so I’m doing that. And I, I really don’t like to think too far ahead about what I’m going to write. I like to have it come organically.

Jennie: Yeah.

Caroline: Um, so I could go back into the archives. I could write another one of these kinds of books, but I don’t know if that’s the [00:41:00] right thing for me right now.

Jennie: Yeah.

Caroline: Um, I want to make sure whatever I write next- You know, I loved writing this book so much. It’s my favorite... I mean, it’s, it was such a powerful experience for me, um, because I could bring my personal experiences into it and my scholarly self into it. I don’t... You know, it’s gonna be hard to recreate that.

Yeah. I think it can be done, but I don’t wanna force it. Yeah. So I’m gonna wait and see what the next, what the next one

Jennie: is. Don’t you, don’t you love the interviewer who’s like, “Hey, congratulations. You wrote a book. What, what’s your next

Caroline: one?” What are you working on now? What are you doing now? I know. And I get that.

I’m like-

Jennie: So mean ...

Caroline: I’m just, I’m just reading books I wanna read. I’m doing my laundry. I’m getting to know my dog again. You know?

Jennie: Oh, wow. Well, thank

Caroline: you. But, you know, it’s a fair question. Yeah.

Jennie: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for coming and chatting about this, and for writing such a cool book. And- Thank you ... um, I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next.

Caroline: Thank you, Jennie. It was a [00:42:00] pleasure.

Jennie: Well, for our listeners, until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.

The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work

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Today’s the day! We begin the Summer 2026 Blueprint Challenge today, and we want to make sure you’re receiving all the benefits of participating. In this note, we’ll cover how to make sure you’re getting Blueprint Challenge emails from us (so we can alert you about Live Coaching sessions) and how to access the chat (so …

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Nash reflects that writers should view themselves as entrepreneurs who invest in growth and connections, since getting work read depends on connecting with readers and other people, and she encourages seeking meaningful collaboration and networking without a transactional mindset.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, a quick reminder. The Blueprint Summer Challenge begins July 10th and it’s not too late to join us. If you’ve been thinking about writing a new book, getting unstuck in a draft, or tackling a revision, I’d love to have you jump in. For just $19, you’ll get the new blueprint course, including the full text of my blueprint book, 14 video lessons, and real coaching examples.

Throughout the summer, paid podcast subscribers will also have access to live coaching sessions with me and Author Accelerator coaches that are focused on specific blueprint steps and writing challenges. And because I want this to be as hands-on as possible, everyone who enrolls in the course for the summer challenge will be entered to win a blueprint revision with me and a live hot coaching session that we’ll record for the podcast.

We’ll award one of these for every 100 enrollments. If you’re ready to spend six weeks making your book stronger, you’ll find details in the show notes[00:01:00]

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a Write Big episode where I bring you short conversations about the mindset shifts that shape the work, and today I’m talking about the importance of prioritizing people.

KJ has something that she often says, which is that people are a good use of time. Maybe actually what she says is people are a good investment of time No, I think it’s use. People are a good use of time. I should have checked with KJ before I quoted her, but it’s a thing that she often says whenever things might get hard with friends or family or colleagues or travel or anything, that when you’re doing something in service of being with people, it’s usually a good use of time, and I just love that.

It-- I hang [00:02:00] onto that. It’s a great reminder, and I thought of that for this episode today because I recently made a rather sudden decision to take a trip to Boise, Idaho, to go to a conference, and this decision came with a lot of costs. Some of those costs are related to time. I’ve been traveling a lot lately for my family and for friends’, children’s weddings and for college reunions and all kinds of things, and travel is really hard for me.

I’m an introvert. I love to work. I love to be at home. I love my routines, and travel is hard for me because of food-related things related to migraine triggers. So it’s not easy for me to be out in the world and traveling, and I’ve been doing it a lot. So the decision to go to Boise was the decision to shoehorn another trip into a really busy summer.

So that was one thing, the cost of time. There was also, of course, the cost of money. I had to buy a ticket to the [00:03:00] conference. I had to buy a plane ticket, and those things add up, so you know, it was a decision to spend that money. Then there was the cost of just the energy itself, of being in a room with people and in a crowd and with people I largely don’t know and all the things.

So there were a lot of costs to making this decision, but I wanna talk about the reason that I made it, because that goes to this idea of people are a good use of time. So I made this decision for two primary reasons, and the first is that my business mentor, Claire Pelletreau, said that she was going to be at the Craft and Commerce conference in Boise, Idaho, and that people should go to be there with her in person and meet her and go to the conference with her.

Now, I’ve been to this conference before. It’s run by Kit, which used to be ConvertKit, which is the email service provider, and it is wholly focused on small business people. So it’s entrepreneurs and small [00:04:00] business owners, and that can be book coaches. It certainly is me and the business I run at Author Accelerator.

And it’s a great conference. It’s where I actually first heard Rachel Rodgers speak, who just blew me away. If you don’t know Rachel Rodgers’ work, she’s at hello7.com, and her book is We Should All Be Millionaires. It is a fantastic book about empowerment and intellectual property and owning your voice and many things that are great for anybody who is making anything, whether it’s a book or a business or any sort of thing that you’re creating.

I love, love her work, and that’s where I first heard her. And so I was excited to attend the conference for the sake of the conference itself. I also happened to peek at the roster of speakers, and I saw that James Clear was going to be the keynote speaker. He’s the guy who wrote Atomic Habits, and I thought, “Ooh, I’d love to hear s- him speak and see how he performs and see what he has to say these days.”[00:05:00]

I know he’s working on a new book, and he has a really interesting writing process that he shared before that involves giant spreadsheets that he has ideas on that he tests with his giant audience. And I thought, “Okay, cool. I wanna go hear him.” So there was the conference itself, but mostly it was Claire saying, “I’m gonna be there.

Come be with me.” And I thought, “Yeah, I’m gonna spend this time, this effort, this energy, this money just to go meet my business mentor.” She lives all the way across the country from me. I’m in Santa Barbara, California. She’s in Philadelphia. I’ve been in her mastermind for two years. I’ve learned so much from her.

I have so much gratitude for the energy she’s put into me and my business and my brain, and just to go and even have a lunch with her, I don’t quite know when I’m recording this what we’re gonna do, but for sure I’ll see her. I’ll do something, maybe breakfast or a walk or something, but just the chance to do that, totally worth the investment And then also my sister lives in Boise, and [00:06:00] my niece, and my grand-niece.

Is that what you call it? My sister’s child’s child. But, um, I have family there and so fantastic. So many reasons to go. All the people-y reasons to go. And I wanted to go through that thought process that I had because investing in ourselves and investing in ourselves as business people is something that we don’t normally think about.

Writers don’t normally think about themselves as entrepreneurs or people who should make investments in their growth or their learning or their understanding, and I think it’s just so important to have that mindset about what we’re doing because the thing that writers want is for their work to be read, and that means that they want to connect with readers, and that means that they want to connect with people.

We’re all in the business of people. It’s all about connecting with other people. Yes, we sit alone in our rooms, and we do our work, and we have all [00:07:00] kinds of things happening in our heads, the stories that we spin and the plans that we make and th- the content that we create and all of those things. Right now I’m sitting alone in a room talking to you, so I get it.

We spend a lot of time doing that, but also we have to get out in the world, and we have to connect with people. And so that concept that KJ talks about that people are a good use of time is something to keep in mind, and it’s something to look out for in your own career. And what I mean by that is where can you find people?

Where can you connect with them? Where can you make friends with them and network with them? So many of these connections start online. They get nurtured online, and that’s exactly what happened with me and with Claire. She’s a person that I followed for years. I listened to her podcast. I went to her free trainings.

I did all the things. Then I joined her low-level program. Then I joined her high-level program. Then I stayed in her [00:08:00] high-level program. You know, so I’ve been investing a lot of time into her teachings and into her, but I’ve never met her. I’ve only ever seen her on a Zoom, and so this is a chance to kind of close that loop.

So I would just encourage you to think about the people that mean something to you in your career, not in the way of how can I use these people or how can they help me or how can I leverage them? Not that sort of use, but how can you use them and connect with them and, and collaborate with them and be in cahoots with them and all the things?

Because as KJ reminds me all the time, people are a good use of time. I’ll certainly report when I get back from Boise about how it went and what I learned and all the things, but I wanted to capture that thought before I go and to share it with all of you I think that it’s a really big part of playing big and writing big and being big in our own careers and our own authority.

When we invest in ourselves [00:09:00] and in what we’re doing, we lift ourselves up, and we give ourselves a better shot, and we take ourselves more seriously, and that’s what I’m trying to do here and what I’m trying to inspire you to do too

The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:10:00] work.

Every summer, we promise ourselves the same thing: This is the summer I finally make real progress on my book. But then July hits. The kids are home, vacations get scheduled, or you sit down at the laptop and realize you aren’t entirely sure what your manuscript actually needs next. Do you need to write more words? Toss out the middle? Start a major revision?

If you are starting a book, stuck in a messy draft, or trying to figure out how to revise, we have a plan for you.

On July 10, we are kicking off the #AmWriting Blueprint Summer Challenge—a six-week deep dive designed to give you a proven framework, expert eyes, and a community of accountability buddies to help you build a stronger book.

What is the Blueprint Summer Challenge?

July 10 to August 20 — $19

Here is what you get when you join us:

• The All-New Blueprint Teachable Course. We are offering this new course at a special summer price to podcast listeners. For just $19, you get the full text of The Blueprint book in your choice of genre, 14 video lessons from Jennie and other Author Accelerator coaches, and coaching examples to help you lay a strong foundation for your book. The course is now open.

• It includes:

  1. The full text of The Blueprint book in your chosen genre.

  2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework, some from Jennie, some from coaches Jennie has trained. You’ll ger practical guidance, stories, and inspiration for each step!

  3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

  The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

• New Coach Matching System: Need more support when you’re done? Author Accelerator is debuting a brand-new, intuitive matching system to pair you up with the perfect coach for your specific genre and project style. (Free of charge to get matched). You can get that link in the course.

Paid podcast subscribers get additional support:

• Live Coaching & Expert Access: Join us for live coaching sessions with Jennie and specialized Author Accelerator coaches across all genres (fiction, nonfiction, memoir). We’ll be doing hot seat coaching — which means you can share your work, get feedback, and learn from other writers working out their books. Jennie plans to do live coaching once a week on Mondays at 9 PT/ 12 ET starting on July 13th, and we will have other coaches who specialize in various genres offering additional sessions, as well.

  • We’ll also have additional Live Coaching Sessions (both of these sessions will be with memoir coaches — more Live Coaching Sessions to come):

    • July 22 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET, we’re pleased to host Laura Miedema

    • August 12 at noon PT/3 pm ET, we’re pleased to host Esther Harder

• Grand Prize Raffle: All paid podcast subscribers who participate in the summer Blueprint challenge will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with Jennie, which will ALSO be recorded as a “Hot Seat Coaching” episode on the #AmWriting podcast!

• A Community of Peers: Become part of our async community chat for 6 weeks of accountability, troubleshooting, and camaraderie. We will do this through the Chat on Substack. Each Friday, we will post a prompt about your Blueprint work and invite people to submit their answers so you can cheer each other on. This is also a space where you can connect with potential critique partners or accountability buddies.

  To receive enjoy these extra benefits of the Summer Blueprint Challenge, become a paid subscriber.

  👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

• New Coach Matching System: Need more support when you’re done? Author Accelerator is debuting a brand-new, intuitive matching system to pair you up with the perfect coach for your specific genre and project style. (Free of charge to get matched)

Paid podcast subscribers get additional support:

• Live Coaching & Expert Access: Join us for live coaching sessions with Jennie and specialized Author Accelerator coaches across all genres (fiction, nonfiction, memoir). We’ll be doing hot seat coaching — which means you can share your work, get feedback, and learn from other writers working out their books. Jennie plans to do live coaching once a week on Mondays at 3 PST/ 6 EST starting on July 13th, and we will have other coaches who specialize in various genres offering additional sessions, as well.

  • We’ll also have additional Live Coaching Sessions (both of these sessions will be with memoir coaches — more Live Coaching Sessions to come):

    • July 22 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET, we’re pleased to host Laura Miedema

    • August 12 at noon PT/3 pm ET, we’re pleased to host Esther Harder

• Grand Prize Raffle: All paid podcast subscribers who participate in the summer Blueprint challenge will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with Jennie, which will ALSO be recorded as a “Hot Seat Coaching” episode on the #AmWriting podcast!

• A Community of Peers: Become part of our async community chat for 6 weeks of accountability, troubleshooting, and camaraderie. We will give everyone a chance to get matched with a critique partner, time to share your work and your challenges, and a place to be with other writers working on their projects this summer.

Every summer, we promise ourselves the same thing: This is the summer I finally make real progress on my book. But then July hits. The kids are home, vacations get scheduled, or you sit down at the laptop and realize you aren’t entirely sure what your manuscript actually needs next. Do you need to write more words? Toss out the middle? Start a major revision?

If you are starting a book, stuck in a messy draft, or trying to figure out how to revise, we have a plan for you.

On July 10, we are kicking off the #AmWriting Blueprint Summer Challenge—a six-week deep dive designed to give you a proven framework, expert eyes, and a community of accountability buddies to help you build a stronger book.

What is the Blueprint Summer Challenge?

July 10 to August 20 — $19

Here is what you get when you join us:

• The All-New Blueprint Teachable Course. We are offering this new course at a special summer price to podcast listeners. For just $19, you get the full text of The Blueprint book in your choice of genre, 14 video lessons from Jennie and other Author Accelerator coaches, and coaching examples to help you lay a strong foundation for your book. The course will open on July 10th.

• It includes:

  1. The full text of The Blueprint book in your chosen genre.

  2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework, some from Jennie, some from coaches Jennie has trained. You’ll ger practical guidance, stories, and inspiration for each step!

  3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

  The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

• New Coach Matching System: Need more support when you’re done? Author Accelerator is debuting a brand-new, intuitive matching system to pair you up with the perfect coach for your specific genre and project style. (Free of charge to get matched). You can get that link in the course.

Paid podcast subscribers get additional support:

• Live Coaching & Expert Access: Join us for live coaching sessions with Jennie and specialized Author Accelerator coaches across all genres (fiction, nonfiction, memoir). We’ll be doing hot seat coaching — which means you can share your work, get feedback, and learn from other writers working out their books. Jennie plans to do live coaching once a week on Mondays at 9 PT/ 12 ET starting on July 13th, and we will have other coaches who specialize in various genres offering additional sessions, as well.

• Grand Prize Raffle: All paid podcast subscribers who participate in the summer Blueprint challenge will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with Jennie, which will ALSO be recorded as a “Hot Seat Coaching” episode on the #AmWriting podcast!

• A Community of Peers: Become part of our async community chat for 6 weeks of accountability, troubleshooting, and camaraderie. We will do this through the Chat on Substack. Each Friday, we will post a prompt about your Blueprint work and invite people to submit their answers so you can cheer each other on. This is also a space where you can connect with potential critique partners or accountability buddies.

  To receive enjoy these extra benefits of the Summer Blueprint Challenge, become a paid subscriber.

  👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

We’ll be reviewing submissions LIVE on the podcast. This time, we’re going to look at novel FIRST PAGES.

This Book Lab will feature guest host Jo Piazza, author of the forthcoming and fantastic The Parisian Heist, national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance, Everyone is Lying to You, We Are Not Like Them, You Were Always Mine, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff and How to Be Married, frequent #AmWriting guest and truly literary citizen extraordinaire. Jo and I (KJ here) will be reviewing first pages (up to 350 words) and answering this ONE question: would we turn the page and keep reading?? You can read more about Jo HERE.

All paid subscribers are welcome to submit for the chance to hear me and Jo review your first page on the podcast.

Here’s How To Submit

Submit your first 350 words HERE.

You have until July 16, 2026 to submit.

We’ll be posting the episode in late July.

We can’t wait to read your first page!

Starting a book? Stuck in a draft? Planning a revision?

The Blueprint Summer Challenge is designed to help you make meaningful progress on your manuscript this summer.

Over six weeks, beginning July 10, you’ll use the Blueprint—a proven framework for developing stronger books with greater clarity, purpose, and reader impact—to move your project forward, wherever you are in the process.

Whether you’re writing nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or another genre entirely, the goal is simple: spend six focused weeks making your book stronger.

Start with the Blueprint Course

We’re offering an all-new Blueprint course in Teachable, which includes:

1. The full text of The Blueprint

2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework

3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

4. Practical guidance you can use immediately

The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

Course enrollment: $19

👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

Join the Live Coaching Sessions

Paid podcast subscribers will also receive access to six weeks of live coaching sessions featuring me and a variety of Author Accelerator coaches.

Each session will focus on a specific Blueprint step and the challenges writers commonly encounter while developing, drafting, or revising their books. You’ll have opportunities to ask questions, learn from expert coaches, and watch hot-seat coaching sessions where writers will receive direct feedback on their work.

Some sessions will be led by me, while others will feature experienced Author Accelerator coaches with expertise across genres and stages of the writing process. We’ll hold these sessions at different times to accommodate different schedules, but we know for sure that Jennie will be doing coaching each Monday at 3:00 PST. The first one will be July 13. Other sessions will be slotted in soon.

Whether you’re starting a new project, trying to get unstuck, or preparing for revision, these live sessions will help you apply the Blueprint to your own book and make meaningful progress throughout the summer.

Become a paid subscriber for $12/month

Win a Blueprint Revision

Everyone who enrolls in the Blueprint Course will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast.

We’ll award one winner for every 100 course enrollments, so the more writers who join the Challenge, the more opportunities there are to win this Grand Prize

Ready for More Support?

As you progress, you’ll also have the opportunity to connect with a trained Blueprint coach for personalized guidance, feedback, and accountability. We are rolling out a new coach matching system that will give you an easy and intuitive way to find the coaches who are a great fit for your and your project.

There is no charge for this service and no obligation to work with the coaches we match you with – but what a great chance to connect with people who could help you write your best book!

Whether you need help clarifying your vision, solving a structural problem, or creating a plan for finishing your manuscript, a coach can help you take the next step.

Join us on July 10 and spend six weeks making your book stronger.

Get more from Jennie Nash in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

After tragedy and other commitments, she returned to revise intensively, resubmitted to her agent, and the novel later sold. Browne also describes submitting pages to the podcast’s First Page Lab and learning to absorb both critical and positive feedback.

Visit Meghan on her website: https://meghanpbrowne.com

Join the Blueprint Summer Challenge

Starting a book? Stuck in a draft? Planning a revision?

The Blueprint Summer Challenge is designed to help you make meaningful progress on your manuscript this summer.

Over six weeks, beginning July 10, you’ll use the Blueprint—a proven framework for developing stronger books with greater clarity, purpose, and reader impact—to move your project forward, wherever you are in the process.

Whether you’re writing nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or another genre entirely, the goal is simple: spend six focused weeks making your book stronger.

Start with the Blueprint Course

We’re offering an all-new Blueprint course in Teachable, which includes:

1. The full text of The Blueprint

2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework

3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

4. Practical guidance you can use immediately

The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

Course enrollment: $19

👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

Join the Live Coaching Sessions

Paid podcast subscribers will also receive access to six weeks of live coaching sessions featuring me and a variety of Author Accelerator coaches.

Each session will focus on a specific Blueprint step and the challenges writers commonly encounter while developing, drafting, or revising their books. You’ll have opportunities to ask questions, learn from expert coaches, and watch hot-seat coaching sessions where writers will receive direct feedback on their work.

Some sessions will be led by me, while others will feature experienced Author Accelerator coaches with expertise across genres and stages of the writing process. We’ll hold these sessions at different times to accommodate different schedules, but we know for sure that Jennie will be doing coaching each Monday at 3:00 PST. The first one will be July 13. Other sessions will be slotted in soon.

Whether you’re starting a new project, trying to get unstuck, or preparing for revision, these live sessions will help you apply the Blueprint to your own book and make meaningful progress throughout the summer.

Become a paid subscriber for $12/month

Win a Blueprint Revision

Everyone who enrolls in the Blueprint Course will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast.

We’ll award one winner for every 100 course enrollments, so the more writers who join the Challenge, the more opportunities there are to win this Grand Prize

Ready for More Support?

As you progress, you’ll also have the opportunity to connect with a trained Blueprint coach for personalized guidance, feedback, and accountability. We are rolling out a new coach matching system that will give you an easy and intuitive way to find the coaches who are a great fit for your and your project.

There is no charge for this service and no obligation to work with the coaches we match you with – but what a great chance to connect with people who could help you write your best book!

Whether you need help clarifying your vision, solving a structural problem, or creating a plan for finishing your manuscript, a coach can help you take the next step.

Join us on July 10 and spend six weeks making your book stronger.

Learn All About the Summer Challenge

On July 6th at 9:00 am PT, Jennie will be hosting a live AMA to talk about the Blueprint and the summer challenge, and answer all your questions. We’ll send out an email reminder about this event.

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie and the Blueprint Summer Challenge begins July 10th. I’d love for you to join us. If you’re starting a book, stuck in a draft, or preparing for a revision, this challenge was designed for you. Over six weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to learn the blueprint framework through our new blueprint course.

Over six weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to learn the blueprint framework in our new blueprint course. You can also participate in live coaching sessions with me and Author Accelerator coaches and see the blueprint applied to real books and real writing challenges. The course is just $19 and includes the full blueprint book, 14 video lessons, and coaching examples.

And remember, everyone who enrolls in the course for the blueprint challenge is automatically entered to win a blueprint revision with me and a live coaching session on the podcast. We’ll select one winner for every hundred enrollments. If you’ve been looking for a reason to recommit to your book this summer, this is your invitation.

Visit the link in the [00:01:00] show notes and join the Blueprint Summer Challenge today.

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #AMWriting Podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick

with it long enough to finish what matters most.

I’m so excited today to be talking to Meghan Brown, who has an incredible story connected to some of the things we’ve been doing here at the podcast, including the upcoming Blueprint Challenge.

So I’m gonna talk to Meghan about her journey to getting her first novel published and on its way to being on the shelf and in readers’ hands. So welcome, Meghan.

Meghan: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Jennie: This is such a fun story. I just, I just love it. So we heard about you and your book- Because we chose you to do one of [00:02:00] our First Page Lab readings where we look at the first pages of a novel and give feedback, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

But through, through that, we learned that you did our original Blueprint Challenge in the summer of 2022. So can you talk about where you were in your writing life, and why you decided to do that, and what the experience was like for you?

Meghan: Sure. I was so excited when y’all ran that challenge in 2022. I actually first started working on this project in 2019, which feels like a bazillion years ago because it was pre-pandemic, of course.

And I took a little class at a local place, it was virtual, but called The Writing Barn here in Austin that does a lot of great classes. It was a middle grade class. I had just gotten representation for some picture books I had been working on, and my agent and other people in the industry were telling me that my voice was very middle grade.

So I took this class, I wrote 20 pages. [00:03:00] I got nominated for a big award at our local SCBWI, um, conference that spring, and I actually used my very first advance money from my picture books to start at Vermont College of Fine Arts for my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, where I was hoping to learn how to write middle grade.

And through the two years that it took in that program, including being in that program during the pandemic, and working with Linda Urban and Anh Nha, who are both very, very incredible, um, authors in their own right, I was able to finish a first draft by the summer of 2021. And I basically, because of a lot of things, just didn’t really touch that work until I heard that you were running this challenge, and I was so excited to kind of dive back in and realize that I needed to kind of reverse engineer the whole project.

So I had a first draft, and I just [00:04:00] was looking to fix it.

Jennie: Amazing. So the... I just want you to be able to tell our listeners about your picture books because they’re- they’re so beautiful, and we’ll link to your website in the show notes so people can find you. It’s Meghan P. Browe, and it’s Browe with an E on the end.

Um, but just, just so we sort of know the vibe of what your work had been, uh, beforehand. Sure. Yeah.

Meghan: Um, well, thank you. They are very beautiful, and I did not illustrate any of them. Um, so the, the first one is called Indelible Ann. It’s the larger than life story of Governor Ann Richards. It’s a nonfiction picture book for young readers all about the life of late, great Ann Richards.

Um, and that one is illustrated by Carlyn Witt, who is an awesome Texan that lives in LA now And then the second is called Dorothy the Brave. It’s the story of a female aviator from World War II who I got to meet and interview for the first time when I was in eighth [00:05:00] grade.

Jennie: What?

Meghan: A wild story. And, um, then I ended up writing the book that she got to read just months before she passed at the age of 99.

Jennie: What?

Meghan: Um, and I know. That one was a, a true book of my heart. Um, that one is illustrated by Brooke Smart, who is based in Utah. And the third book that came out last year was, is called The Bees of Notre Dame, and it’s illustrated by E.B. Goodale, and it’s the true s- survival story of the honeybees that were housed on the rooftop of the cathedral when it burned.

Jennie: Wow, that’s so timely, ‘cause the cathedral just opened.

Meghan: Yes, yes.

Jennie: Wow.

Meghan: And I actually got to go back over the summer with my family. We did a huge bucket list trip and went to see the Olympic Games, and so it was really cool to be back there over the summer.

Jennie: How did you... Now I’m just curious about this story.

Sure. How did

Meghan: you hear

Jennie: about the bees?

Meghan: I was at home with a bunch of sick kids right before [00:06:00] Easter, the week leading up to Easter. My kids were really tiny at the time. And, um, I am a beekeeper, and so all of my friends were sending me the link to the article about these honeybees. Everyone was wanting to know if they survived the fire.

And I sent the link to my agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, and sh- I said, “Is this the bee book?” She had been kind of pushing me, like, “Bees are so in the zeitgeist. What is your bee book?” And I said, “Is this the bee book?” And she said, “How fast can you get it to me?” And I told her I had only ever been to Paris, Texas, so I needed to jump on a plane.

And my husband actually flies for Southwest, and so I was able to use his pass privilege to hitchhike there on, like, taxes. It was a miracle. And on the way over, Jennie, on the way over I was, like, googling the email addresses for the people that were interviewed in the USA Today article, and emailing them and telling them, “I’m on my way.

Can I please have an interview?” And they were telling me no, like, three times in a row, and finally they relented, and they were so [00:07:00] wonderful. And I got to go beekeeping on the rooftops of Paris. I still can’t believe that that happened.

Jennie: This is a crazy story.

Meghan: It is wild.

Jennie: Wow, that is so cool.

Meghan: It was really cool.

Okay.

Jennie: So this is the, this is the vibe of what you were working on when, when you started to write the novel- Yes ... that you’re, you’re talking about. So-

Meghan: Yes ...

Jennie: I’m curious about your instinct to come do the Blueprint Challenge with a finished manuscript, because for me that’s actually- One of the most powerful times to use the tool of the blueprint is- Mm-hmm

to sort of see, well, what do I have? What’s working? You know, to your, you used the word fix. What, what needs to be fixed? What was your instinct for doing something like that with this finished manuscript?

Meghan: Well, I just knew that it wasn’t working, and even after having spent all this time and money on the MFA, I still didn’t know how to fix it.

And I [00:08:00] I just was really lost. I knew that there was a good story. I knew that, that this middle grade voice was very much my natural voice. I think that’s the reason why I have fallen into picture book nonfiction, is because that voice kind of trends older anyway. Um, so I knew that what I had written was good, but it just wasn’t working, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

And so I thought, “Well, I, I have to try this. W- why not?”

Jennie: Wow, okay. So the... Some people think that 10 weeks to do the blueprint is kind of a long time, where you’re very methodically doing each... There are actually 14 steps in the blueprint. Mm-hmm. We combine them into, to making it, um, a 10-week podcast challenge that is coming up again starting in January.

Um, was the 10 week, did that feel like a good pace for you to work through this, or did it feel... I imagine you still have pretty little kids, if they [00:09:00] were really, really little in, in the pandemic.

Meghan: Yeah. Yeah. So it was interesting because I think that the first time through I needed all of that time to just really marinate.

Like, I would, I usually listen to y’all’s podcast when I run, and I would go out with my dog, and I would run, and I would listen to it, and then I would be percolating on it, and throughout the week. I’d even listen to it multiple times before I actually sat down to do the work. Um, but I think the first time through that that was a great pace because I really wanted to learn what the steps were, what was the reasoning behind it, and how could I really do it well.

And so the first time through, um, actually I think I only got a few weeks in and had this terrible tragedy in my family, and my father-in-law passed away suddenly. And so I had to kick it down the road, and I didn’t actually, um, finish in time to put my name in the hat for the drawing or whatever. Yeah. And I picked it up and ended up [00:10:00] finishing in, like, late October.

But I was really grateful for the inability to, um, to just binge the whole system, because I think it really helped me pace myself and learn each step, and the reasoning behind each step.

Jennie: Right. Right. That’s interesting. Um, I’m gonna make a note that maybe we should make that available, um, to people who sign up for it, ‘cause I think we could.

I’ll talk to KJ about that. Um, so okay. So it, y- you’d started and then you set it aside and you came back to it, and what did you, what did the blueprint process show you about the story, or, um, what insights did you have at that point?

Meghan: Well, my agent had seen ear- like, the, the very first finished draft that I had done during my MFA program, and she was like, “This is great.

I love it, but there’s nothing happening here.” And so, like, great setting and great characters, but [00:11:00] what is the plot? And so, um It really helped me figure out that there wasn’t a plot, and people had said that, but I was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not really sure how to, to invent a new thread.”

And it really, the inside outline really helped me make those connections. In fact, I’m going to just tell you that I have this Post-it Note that lives on my laptop that says, “Each scene, plot what happens, point the emotional meaning for the main character.” And I just like because of that, and then again, plot and point, plot and point, and this has helped me because since then I have done the blueprint challenge again twice.

Once over this past summer I did it for a nonfiction project, and then I actually recently worked through it again for a new novel that I’m hopefully gonna have ready for my editor when I finish edits on this new thing that I just sold. And, um, it’s been [00:12:00] really just such a good tool for me. I think as someone who grew up with an athletic background, I was so used to having a coach and like I’m really good at following directions.

I like cooking because a recipe is easy to follow. I just need someone to tell me what to do and then I can do it. So it’s been so good for me to have that roadmap.

Jennie: Wow, that just makes me smile so hard, um, to hear that that’s on a Post-it Note on your computer. That’s so cool. Yes. It’s, um, we’re talking about the inside outline, which is the culmination of the fiction blueprint.

There are different outlines that culminate the nonfiction and memoir blueprints, but the idea is to have a very small outline that captures the emotional arc of the character or in the other genres of the, of the reader’s transformation and marries it to the plot. Because so often, well, the feedback you got is exactly what often writers encounter is [00:13:00] nothing happens or nothing matters that happens.

Exactly. Seems there’s a, there might be a lot of drama or action, but it doesn’t actually impact the protagonist and their movements and decisions. So that’s very cool. That makes me so happy. Okay, so you find out that, um, that nothing’s happening in your story, so then what did you do?

Meghan: Well, I was able to...

So I did the inside outli- finished the blueprint, including the inside outline, which really was the key for me to understanding that I needed things to happen so that other things could happen. I, I had the idea for what was going to be the, the final scene, like that was maybe one of the first things that had come to me with this idea for the book.

But I didn’t know how to get there or how to get there that mattered, like you’re saying, and so that was really illuminating. And once I finished the blueprint, I then, again- Unfortunately or not, set it aside for what [00:14:00] turned out to be like a whole nother year. Wow. And I launched the ... And part of it was because it was really hard for me to emotionally, like launch these picture books out into the world, and market them, and then also be writing this completely different thing, and be a mom, and all the other things that are going on.

So, um, I came back to it about a year ago, a little more than a year ago. And, um, I actually had like a week of school visits lined up. Um, my Ann Richards book had made it onto this big state list called the Blue Bonnet List, which in Texas is like the big list, and it’s a big list, um, nationally. I grew up reading the Blue Bonnet List.

It was a dream come true. I was, as soon as this happened, I was like, “I could die happy tonight.” Aw. Um, so my Ann Richards book was on the Blue Bonnet List. I was doing lots of school visits, and I had booked a week of visits in the Houston area. But for some reason, a couple [00:15:00] schools backed out, don’t know why.

Um, and anyway, I had these two or three days that my, my traveling husband had already like blocked off for vacation so that he could help at home with the kids. And I just booked myself a fancy hotel in downtown Houston, made myself stay there and finish revising according to the blueprint that I had created.

And at the end of that process, I was able to send my agent a new revision, and then she and I worked on it for the first half of this year, and it finally went out, um, at the end of the summer.

Jennie: Wow. So then that brings us to the, the, the place where the podcast hosts got an email from you saying that we had done your pages on, in the First Page Lab, and that you had, you had sold this novel.

And [00:16:00] we It was so funny because we don’t know who the writers are. People are, you know, we don’t know, it’s anonymous, or we don’t look at the names, or we don’t know who they are. We’re just looking at these pages. And so we, we did those pages, and I don’t remember what we said, but do you want to tell us, uh, first of all the name of the novel?

Meghan: I would love to. So the, um, this was, I think I renamed it, uh, I don’t even remember. It’s been a long time. It’s called Welcome to Heaven, tentatively, and actually, I was talking to my editor, and it’s not officially announced, and I said, “Is it okay for me to do this podcast?” She was like, “Why don’t you an- officially announce the novel on the podcast?”

Amazing. So here it is, the official announcement that Welcome to Heaven is gonna be published by Firewell and Friends, and, um, it’s due out in spring of ‘26. But the funny thing was that, um, in, so in the timeline of things, [00:17:00] I had sent you these pages on a whim because I was feeling really insecure about things.

I had just heard back from my agent about things she felt like still needed to be fixed before it went out on submission, and I was like, “I just feel like I should put this in a drawer. I haven’t sold anything in four years. I keep creating stuff and nothing is taking, and maybe I just need to put this away.”

And, um, it was at the very beginning of the summer, and y’all had put out the call. Um, I was not in a good space mentally, and so for, like, a kick in the pants, I threw the, the first pages on, and it was actually at an experimental prologue that I had just come up with as, like, something new. I posted them or submitted them to y’all and thought, “Well, maybe this is just the kick in the pants that I need.”

And then I heard back after it had already gone out on submission that it was going, and I had finished a bunch of other revisions, that it was going to be [00:18:00] reviewed on the podcast publicly. And I was terrified. Terrified. Truly terrified. I think KJ actually said, “We’re going to read your stuff,” and I responded that I was terrified And unfortunately also, I was unable to, I think I was, like, up late folding laundry, doing something really mundane and boring, and I was up way too late, and I got a notification on my phone that it had gone live, and I should have just waited till the next morning.

But I listened to it, and I couldn’t fall asleep that night at all because, to be frank, it wasn’t a great review.

Jennie: I’m just laughing because it’s so brutal, actually, what we do. It’s really just awful. Like, we’re just talking about how things land with us. But I remember it was titled Welcome to Heaven at the time, ‘cause I remember then the first lines are that it’s taking place in a place called Heaven, Texas.

[00:19:00] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And, and I remember loving that, that, um, sort of little twist that the title you think is something different than what it is, um, really, or, or maybe actually not. But, um, I, I remember that part and loving that, and what did we say?

Meghan: Well, so I, I mean, what you said was totally true, and part of it is that this, like, experimental prologue needs, like, formatting to really be understood, and there’s no formatting in the form that you send in your first pages.

Um, and I was really interested. I actually only got edoto- my editorial letter and my notes back from my editor last Friday. Oh, wow. And I was dying to see if she had excised the prologue, and I, she hasn’t. I’m only, I have only gotten a little bit into it, so she hasn’t yet, but there might be some implications later that’s like, “Maybe we should nix the prologue.”

I’m not sure. Yeah. I’m not there yet. Um, but basically what you said was, and it took me a long time to hear the truth of [00:20:00] what was actually being said. Maybe other writers can, uh, and maybe you can relate to this, that sometimes when you get critical feedback, it’s hard to hear any of the positive feedback, too.

Jennie: Yeah.

Meghan: So the first time, when I listened to it at midnight, I was terrified. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out, and I thought, “Wow, what a mistake. I can’t believe this is on the desk of editors. I’m never gonna get a contract ever in my life.”

Jennie: Oh, no. “

Meghan: What a huge mistake.” But then I went back and made myself listen to it again when the sun had come up, and I, I thought, “Well, there’s actually some really great compliments in here about how I do have good writing chops,” and writing a story is hard, and it takes more than just being able to, to write beautifully.

Like, you have to be able to tell the story correctly, and that’s always been something that I feel like I’ve struggled with. So I am so grateful for the critical feedback, and I think that it’s such a lesson and a good reminder to me And hopefully other people that when we receive critical feedback, to really listen to the parts that are positive too, because [00:21:00] that’s just as important as the, as the critical pieces.

Which are also really wonderful. I had an advisor, Jane Kurtz, when I was at PCFA, who was helping me with my Notre Dame book, and she had given me some, um, some brutal feedback, and I was really kind of discouraged. And she actually said, “I think I need to get on the phone with you because I can tell that this is hard for you, and let’s talk about it.”

And she told me on that phone call that... She said, “You know, what I want you to think about this as is these are, these are opportunities to make it the best that it can be because once it’s published, you can’t change it anymore, and I want you to be so happy with what it is.” And so I try and remind myself of Jane being my little guardian angel on my shoulder just telling me all the time, like, “It’s okay.

We’re just making it better.”

Jennie: Oh, I love that. So Welcome to Heaven, coming out in spring 2026. Do you want to talk about what the story’s about, or do you want to save that for, um-

Meghan: I’ll just, just very [00:22:00] shortly, um, because I don’t know how much is going to change. We’re just start- I’m just starting revisions.

Um, but right now we have Maisie, who is a just graduated from sixth grade student. She’s recently lost her father. Her mother’s, um, kind of functional alcoholsm- alcoholism has become not so functional in the wake of her father’s death, and Mom has to head out to rehab. And on the way, Maisie gets dropped off in West Texas for a summer with her aunt.

She meets a guy named Walt out there. He’s a couple years older. They run around town solving a small town corruption case, and in the midst of that, find out some big family secrets.

Jennie: Ooh, sounds so good. So, um, so this will be your first novel, and it’s, uh, middle grade, and-

Meghan: Yes ...

Jennie: it sounds like it will sit nicely next to your pic- picture book work in terms of your, your body of work.

Meghan: I hope so, yeah. It’s fun to be able to move [00:23:00] into something new and something exciting, and I just feel like I’m learning all the time, and that makes me happy.

Jennie: And it sounds like you have another... Did you get a two-book deal, or are you writing this second book on for option, an option?

Meghan: Yes. I d- I didn’t get a two-book deal, which is okay with me.

It feels like maybe a little less pressure. Um- And I also know that I need to prove myself here. So yes, I’ve, I’ve got this other book that I just finished blueprinting, and I hope to be able to have an pretty easy time doing just submitting my outline and some sample chapters, and maybe could sell that.

We’ll see.

Jennie: I love that you are using the blueprint so steadfastly. How is it doing it- It’s

Meghan: such a great tool.

Jennie: So tell me all about how, what you love.

Meghan: Well, I will, because I am so amazed that you have come up with this. It really is a fabulous tool, especially for people like me that just need a little hand-holding.[00:24:00]

Um, it hasn’t become, like, super intuitive to me yet. I think, you know, I hope that that will come eventually. I was listening to, I don’t remember who it was, I’m sorry, a guest recently talk to you about how they can just hear your voice as they’re blueprinting and even writing now because, um, it comes so naturally, and I’m hoping that that is not far away for me.

But I used it last summer to work through a middle-grade nonfiction project that I don’t know when I will get to, but I’m glad that I have something there in case I decide to really go for it. Um, I don’t want to talk too much about it except to say that it’s about a big-time, um, sports hero, and I think that we’re, the middle-grade genre is missing a lot, a lot of, like, sports books, and kids love sports so much, and so I really would love to do that.

When I go into schools and I mention that I’m working on this project, the kids are like, [00:25:00] “Oh my gosh, I want that book.” So I think that I will write it at some point, I just don’t know that I’m ready yet. Um, and then the

Jennie: book- Can I stop you? I’m actually really curious about-

Meghan: Yes ...

Jennie: the assuredness with which you say that.

What, how do you gauge your readiness?

Meghan: Hmm. Well, I think because you know what? I- there was one point, I don’t know if it’s like in the written materials that go along with the brup- blueprint or if it’s in the, um, podcast, but you talk about if you’re not super excited about it at the end, maybe something isn’t quite there.

And so I think that’s what’s making me feel hesitant is I feel like nervous and not excited.

Jennie: Yeah. Interesting. So

Meghan: I think that maybe that’s what’s making me feel not quite ready.

Jennie: Interesting. Okay. Sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about- No ... um, so you had this nonfiction and now you’re thinking about the second, uh, fiction.

Meghan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:26:00] And I, this is something that this idea came to me, um, when I was up at my kid’s school working at their, like, student store where the currency is given to them based on behavior, and I just had this idea. I talked to this one kid who was so hysterical, and I told him when he left, I said, “I think you just gave me the next idea for my next book.”

And he said, “Well, you’ll have to write my name in the acknowledgments.” I said, “Don’t worry, Robert, you can have that.”

Jennie: Aw. That’s so fun. That’s so fun. Well, so for folks who are thinking about doing our January blueprint challenge, it starts on January 6th, and it’s open to anybody who’s a paid subscriber of the podcast.

And you get these 10 podcasts, special podcasts where we walk through each step of the blueprint, and there’s a workbook to capture your answers, and you also get a copy of my blueprint book. Um, and people can do it in fiction, [00:27:00] nonfiction, or memoir. And we have a team of coaches, this is new since you did it, Meghan, um, a team of certified Author Accelerator certified coaches who host Ask Me Anything events and write-alongs, and they’re there to guide and answer questions.

And they’re ... We have specialists in all the genres, so it’s really exciting. Um, can you talk about why you would recommend this for somebody who’s got a finished, finished manuscript? ‘Cause it works for so- somebody who’s starting something new, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you think it would be valuable.

Meghan: Well, I think it’s certainly valuable for both, for people who haven’t yet started and for people that, that have already finished a draft, because I’ve done it from both sides, and I am grateful for it in both instances. Um, in fact, people ask me a lot, I’m sure that anybody who’s published gets the question of, “How do I do what you’re doing?”

And I always tell them to join SCBWI if they’re interested in children, and then [00:28:00] take a class. And this would be a class that I would advise taking. I would consider it, consider it a class. In fact, I have the m- each blueprint saved under the classes folder in my documents- Oh, amazing ... because I consider it a class.

And so I think that this tool for me, if it’s something that I have not yet written, I’m hoping I haven’t yet done the novel that I’m working on. But I feel like it’s gonna help my process be so much smoother. For somebody that has already finished a draft, I think that this tool helps you with something that can feel super unwieldy to actually see it from a, a bird’s-eye view.

One of the hardest things for me going from writing picture book to a longer form has been that in picture book, I can really see the whole story pretty easily. It’s not that hard to wrap my head around. But the puzzle of the novel is so [00:29:00] intricate, and it’s so complex, and this tool has helped me really see it, um, in my mind more easily

Jennie: Wow, that’s, that’s a great encapsulation of it.

Thank you for that. We would love to have anybody who’s eager to do this tool to join us and, um, you’ll be part of a community going through it together, which will be fun. Um, and Meghan, you’re now gonna be somebody that the, the podcast follows and cheers on ‘cause I feel like you’ve had all these touch points with us, um, in doing the blueprint challenge and then the first pages.

You were very brave to send those in and, uh, tolerate our, uh, judgment and opinions. So- I

Meghan: needed, I needed it. I needed it, for sure.

Jennie: I mean, you know, we’re just, we’re just people with, with our opinions, but I guess we do have a lot of experience and the ability to point to evidence in those pages. So we, we have quite a backlog of, uh, first pages that have been submitted.[00:30:00]

Um, so we can’t do them all, but we will put out a call in the future to continue to do those because they’re, they’re, they’re fun for us, and I think they’re useful for our listeners. So thank-

Meghan: And

Jennie: I,

Meghan: I, I think if your, if your listeners still would like that experience, I think that there’s something to be said about just getting out and showing your work to people in your writing community or forming that writing community and getting your work in front of other eyes and how important that is.

So if you’re having trouble getting through that backlog, just making sure that you get your work in front of other people is super important.

Jennie: Yeah. Well, thank you, and thank you for sharing your whole story and, um, sharing your, your books. These, these books really, this bee book looks just incredibly charming.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna go snag that for somebody for the holidays for sure. That’s such a, what a fantastic idea, and, um, congratulations on the novel. And- Thank you ... um, I know 2026 seems like a long way away, but it’s really not. [00:31:00] It’s, you know, you’ve got your almost a year to do your launch activities, right?

So we know-

Meghan: Yes.

Jennie: It’ll be

Meghan: here very soon ...

Jennie: we know what you’ll be doing and, uh, good luck with the new book as well. Um- Thank

Meghan: you, Jennie.

Jennie: Oh, it’s just really delightful to meet you and to hear your story. Thank you for sharing it. And to our listeners, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Outro: The hashtag amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:32:00] work.

If you are starting a book, stuck in a messy draft, or trying to figure out how to revise, we have a plan for you.

On July 10, we are kicking off the #AmWriting Blueprint Summer Challenge—a six-week deep dive designed to give you a proven framework, expert eyes, and a community of accountability buddies to help you build a stronger book.

But before we dive in, we want to answer your questions and help you figure out exactly how this challenge can work for your specific project.

📅 Join Us for a Live Open House on Substack

• When: Monday, July 6th at 9 AM PST / 12 EST

• Where: Right here on Substack Live

• Who: Jennie Nash (founder of Author Accelerator and host of #AmWriting)

Whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, bring your trickiest book hurdles. Jennie will be talking all things Blueprint, breaking down how the challenge works, and answering your questions live so you can decide if the Blueprint Challenge is the right move for your summer writing goals.

What is the Blueprint Summer Challenge?

July 10 to August 20 — $19

Here is what you get when you join us:

• The All-New Blueprint Teachable Course. We are offering this new course at a special summer price to podcast listeners. For just $19, you get the full text of The Blueprint book in your choice of genre, 14 video lessons from Jennie and other Author Accelerator coaches, and coaching examples to help you lay a strong foundation for your book. The course will be opened on July 10 but you can purchase now.

  👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

  👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

  Note: The content for the Blueprint Courses will release when the challenge begins.

• New Coach Matching System: Need more support when you’re done? Author Accelerator is debuting a brand-new, intuitive matching system to pair you up with the perfect coach for your specific genre and project style. (Free of charge to get matched)

Paid podcast subscribers get additional support:

• Live Coaching & Expert Access: Join us for live coaching sessions with Jennie and specialized Author Accelerator coaches across all genres (fiction, nonfiction, memoir). We’ll be doing hot seat coaching — which means you can share your work, get feedback, and learn from other writers working out their books. Jennie plans to do live coaching once a week on Mondays at 3 PST/ 6 EST starting on July 13th, and we will have other coaches who specialize in various genres offering additional sessions, as well.

• Grand Prize Raffle: All paid podcast subscribers who participate in the summer Blueprint challenge will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with Jennie, which will ALSO be recorded as a “Hot Seat Coaching” episode on the #AmWriting podcast!

• A Community of Peers: Become part of our async community chat for 6 weeks of accountability, troubleshooting, and camaraderie. We will give everyone a chance to get matched with a critique partner, time to share your work and your challenges, and a place to be with other writers working on their projects this summer.

Start with the Blueprint Course

We’re offering an all-new Blueprint course in Teachable, which includes:

1. The full text of The Blueprint book in your chosen genre.

2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework, some from Jennie, some from coaches Jennie has trained. You’ll ger practical guidance, stories, and inspiration for each step!

3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

Course enrollment: $19. The course will open on July 10th but you can purchase now.

Note: The content for the Blueprint Courses will release when the challenge begins.

Open House on July 6th

You don’t have to navigate your manuscript alone this summer. Clear your calendar for Monday, July 6th at 9 AM PST / 12 EST drop your questions in the comments below ahead of time if you already know what you want to ask, and let’s get your book moving forward.

They explore why Eliana is susceptible to each system, the emotional costs of her shifting allegiances, and how themes of disillusionment, integrity, belonging, and found family drive the plot. Key craft work includes defending character choices, making Eliana’s decisions feel inevitable and proactive, and strengthening Lena’s role as Eliana’s unconditional friend while likely keeping Lena out of POV to avoid narrative sprawl.

Visit Stuart and Margaret Online

Stuart’s Website: https://www.thebookcoach.co

Margaret’s Website: https://mcnelliswrites.com

Follow Stuart on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misterswakefield/

Follow Margaret on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chiaroscuro.stories/

Join the Blueprint Summer Challenge

Starting a book? Stuck in a draft? Planning a revision?

The Blueprint Summer Challenge is designed to help you make meaningful progress on your manuscript this summer.

Over six weeks, beginning July 10, you’ll use the Blueprint—a proven framework for developing stronger books with greater clarity, purpose, and reader impact—to move your project forward, wherever you are in the process.

Whether you’re writing nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or another genre entirely, the goal is simple: spend six focused weeks making your book stronger.

Start with the Blueprint Course

We’re offering an all-new Blueprint course in Teachable, which includes:

1. The full text of The Blueprint

2. Fourteen video lessons covering every step of the framework

3. Real coaching examples that show writers applying the Blueprint to their own projects

4. Practical guidance you can use immediately

The course is designed to help you develop a stronger foundation for your book—whether you’re beginning from a blank page, working through a draft, or planning a revision.

Course enrollment: $19

👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Challenge

👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Challenge

Join the Live Coaching Sessions

Paid podcast subscribers will also receive access to six weeks of live coaching sessions featuring me and a variety of Author Accelerator coaches.

Each session will focus on a specific Blueprint step and the challenges writers commonly encounter while developing, drafting, or revising their books. You’ll have opportunities to ask questions, learn from expert coaches, and watch hot-seat coaching sessions where writers will receive direct feedback on their work.

Some sessions will be led by me, while others will feature experienced Author Accelerator coaches with expertise across genres and stages of the writing process. We’ll hold these sessions at different times to accommodate different schedules, but we know for sure that Jennie will be doing coaching each Monday at 3:00 PST. The first one will be July 13. Other sessions will be slotted in soon.

Whether you’re starting a new project, trying to get unstuck, or preparing for revision, these live sessions will help you apply the Blueprint to your own book and make meaningful progress throughout the summer.

Become a paid subscriber for $12/month

Win a Blueprint Revision

Everyone who enrolls in the Blueprint Course will be entered to win a personal Blueprint coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast.

We’ll award one winner for every 100 course enrollments, so the more writers who join the Challenge, the more opportunities there are to win this Grand Prize

Ready for More Support?

As you progress, you’ll also have the opportunity to connect with a trained Blueprint coach for personalized guidance, feedback, and accountability. We are rolling out a new coach matching system that will give you an easy and intuitive way to find the coaches who are a great fit for your and your project.

There is no charge for this service and no obligation to work with the coaches we match you with – but what a great chance to connect with people who could help you write your best book!

Whether you need help clarifying your vision, solving a structural problem, or creating a plan for finishing your manuscript, a coach can help you take the next step.

Join us on July 10 and spend six weeks making your book stronger.

Learn All About the Summer Challenge

On July 6th at 9:00 am PT, Jennie will be hosting a live AMA to talk about the Blueprint and the summer challenge, and answer all your questions. We’ll send out an email reminder about this event.

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie, and one of the things I’ve learned from working with so many writers over so many years is that most of us don’t need more information. We need a framework for making progress and consistent support. That’s what the Blueprint Summer Challenge is all about. Starting July 10th, writers from all genres will spend six weeks using the blueprint to strengthen their books, get unstuck, and move forward with greater confidence.

When you enroll in the all-new Blueprint course, you’ll get the complete blueprint book, 14 video lessons, and coaching examples that show you exactly how the process works. And if you’re a paid podcast subscriber, you’ll also be invited to a series of live coaching sessions featuring me and Author Accelerator coaches.

We’ll focus on individual blueprint steps, answer questions, and coach writers through common challenges along the way. As an added bonus, everyone who enrolls in the course will be entered to win a blueprint revision with me and a live hot seat coaching session on the [00:01:00] podcast. I’m so excited to lead you all through the blueprint this summer, and if you’re fired up to join us, head to the show notes to see how.

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a hot seat coaching episode where we work through a real writing challenge in real time, and this is an exciting episode because instead of me being the coach, this time I’ve brought on two of my favorite book coaches, Margaret and Stuart.

And Margaret is working on a brand-new blueprint, and Stuart is coaching her through it. So you get to hear people who are not me, people who I’ve trained, working on the blueprint together, and you get to see different vibes and styles of coaching [00:02:00] and how a different writer responds to it. And I’m just so thrilled that these two are joining us to offer this to our listeners.

We’re going to hear more from Margaret and Stuart as the weeks go on, but I hope you enjoy this blueprint episode, and I hope it inspires you to join us for the upcoming blueprint challenge. This is the kind of work that you’ll get to do as we walk you through the blueprint, and you’ll have the chance to get matched with a certified coach at the end to get this kind of feedback on your blueprint.

It’s a fantastic thing to do whether you’re starting a new project, stuck in the middle of one, or about to revise. All right. Now let’s hear Margaret and Stuart

Margaret: Well, I just want to say thank you so much. This feedback was phenomenal.

Stuart: Oh, thank you. And, you know, thank you for inviting me back in, because this is the third project that we’ve worked on.

Mm-hmm. And I’ve seen this, uh, particular story in a very different [00:03:00] guise.

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: I’m really interested to see, don’t know how much, from romantasy to Florence in the 1400s.

Margaret: Yeah, quite a shift. Quite a shift from, like, the last days on Atlantis to in this thriving, you know, revived artistic world that also has this underbelly to it.

Stuart: Right. Yeah, and I, and I... One of the things that, that I thought was that Florence isn’t just window dressing. The story has to exist and can only exist in Florence.

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: And that really kind of works for me because, you know, sometimes you see, see, uh, or, you know, you read stories and they could be set in any city.

Margaret: Mm-hmm.

Stuart: So I really like that you’ve got that kind of cultural kind of moment in time, um-

Margaret: Yeah ...

Stuart: and that kind of real person adjacent story that we see [00:04:00] in,

you know, um, Silence of the Girls, was it?

Margaret: I love that book.

Stuart: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So- That was

Margaret: a good

Stuart: one ... so yeah, I, I, you know, I... It was just nice to get back into something that felt familiar in one way, but very different in many other ways.

Margaret: Thank you.

Stuart: So that kind of emotional core is still there.

Margaret: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it’s... And you know, it’s interesting because originally Savonarola wasn’t gonna be part of this at all.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: But then as I was watching what’s going on in the world, I was like, you know what, it’s a lot of similarities here, folks.

Stuart: So obviously I’m, I’m gonna, you know, like just check in with you. What I’d like to do is think about pressure testing the story engine, really focusing on Eliana, your protagonist, so, and actually doing some pressure testing on the opposition.

Margaret: Okay. Sounds good.

Stuart: You know, get into their kind of heads. [00:05:00] What would make this hour feel most genuinely useful to you?

Margaret: I love that question. I, I definitely think talking about The Alchemist and Savonarola and, and the differences between them. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and actually I watched, um, I love The Great Courses, and I’ve been watching this, like, Villains Through History.

Okay. And I learned a lot randomly about Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler, and they were in a lecture in comparison to Henry VIII. And then at the end, the lecturer said something really interesting. He said, um, you know, “Vlad and Ivan both had, like, these moments of deep remorse.” Ivan would, like, retreat and pray for, like, a year over the horrible things he’d done, and then he’d come out and do it, and do it again.

But he was saying Henry VIII, whether because of a TBI or, you know, whatever the reason, seemed to have no remorse about most of the things that he

Stuart: did

Margaret: to other

Stuart: people. Who does that sound like?

Margaret: Yeah, exactly. [00:06:00] So I was thinking about that as I started thinking about ways to really starkly differentiate these two men and the, um, the, the, the, the forced bargain that they’re representing.

And what came down to it for me was, um, I ha- I’m still obviously doing my research. I have, like, a baker’s dozen of books that I’m working through, and some of them are very academic, so they’re taking a while. Um, but what I’ve learned of Savonarola so far is that he believed that by purging Florence of its vanities-

Stuart: Mm-hmm

Margaret: and doing some other horrible things, he could trigger the apocalypse and get Jesus to come back. So that’s-

Stuart: Okay ...

Margaret: his ultimate endgame, right? And there are people still doing this now-

Stuart: That’s right ...

Margaret: um, that think that current conflicts in the world will trigger the apocalypse and get Jesus to come back.

So, you know, to me, that’s, that’s such an interesting parallel that has [00:07:00] happened multiple times throughout history.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: It, it’s a belief in certain religious sects that this is how you actually make this happen, and this is why Jesus hasn’t come back yet, is not enough people have been killed or made to suffer, or there’s too much vanity in the world, or, you know, whatever, whatever your overarching reason is- Mm-hmm

that you can kind of trigger the apocalypse into happening. Like, it’s, it’s meant, it... You’re the one who’s meant to do it, right? So he seems to have had this belief that he was gonna be the one to bring about the apocalypse. He also believed that he was getting messages directly from God, so he believed himself to be a prophet.

Right. And he would have these visions, right? So to me, h- he’s, he doesn’t really have that remorse because he believes that this is like a divine calling for him. So anyone that gets harmed in the process is just part of bringing Jesus [00:08:00] back, and they’ll, they’ll, they’ll be rewarded ‘cause they’re gonna go to heaven.

You know, the, the fact that he’s causing them damage and harm on Earth To him, that’s purifying their souls in preparation for, you know, the apocalypse. So he doesn’t have the same sense of remorse, whereas the Alchemist, he’s trying to cure a disease, and he’s willing to do anything to do it. He’s trying to cure the French disease, which we know as syphilis, at a time when there’s this infusion of French soldiers into Italy, especially in Florence.

It’s occupied shortly before the story begins by the French. Um, so, you know, this, this disease, we know syphilis doesn’t kill you nicely, but neither does the, the treatment that people had for it for such a long time, which was mercury. So he, he’s doing a lot of testing, and where he sort of fits into history is there, there was, uh, an alchemist called Paracelsus, and I could be mispronouncing his name.

Mm-hmm. But he really pioneered the idea that the [00:09:00] poison is the dosage. In other words, you can take something that’s poisonous as long as you don’t take enough to kill you, and it can heal you. So I’m kind of, like, crafting the Alchemist character to be sort of like an inspiration for Paracelsus, who comes just a little bit later.

He’s, Paracelsus is born around the time my book is starting. He’s just a baby right now, but it’s the Alchemist, he has remorse for the pain he’s causing people, but he sees it as a greater good, that he’s trying to cure this disease. So that’s, that’s a primary difference between them, and then where that comes into Eliana’s life is that, you know, the Alchemist kind of treats it as like this is a necessary evil, and we feel badly about it, and we’re going to, you know, go to confession about it and do all of these things, and we’re, we’re trying to lessen people’s pain and suffering.

Mm-hmm. Whereas Savonarola is like, the more suffering people go through, the cleaner their soul will be when the apocalypse happens. So it’s like a reverse of how [00:10:00] they’re viewing this process, right? So

Stuart: you use this wonderful line which is, let me see if I can remember it. So the Alchemist burns bodies to save lives, and Savonarola burns lives to save souls.

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: Right?

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: Okay, marvelous. Good. Good. Okay. What, what makes Eliana susceptible to the Alchemist?

Margaret: Yeah, that’s a really great question. So she’s been living with him for almost 10 years now. Mm. He’s been her guardian. He saw something in her when her parents died, and he took her in. Uh, and she’s incredibly bright.

She’s educated, which is very uncommon for, for a young woman of her time to be as educated as she is, but she knows mathematics and Latin and, you know, all these things that she has access to through him. So he, he [00:11:00] kind of represents- This father figure, but also this access to knowledge. She’s got an incredibly vivacious mind, and knowledge was hard to come by, especially for women.

Right. So he represents the only belonging she’s known since her parents were alive, as well as this access to her insatiable curiosity.

Stuart: Okay. But her insatiable curiosity seems to have a goal. Yeah. And I, and I read that goal as resurrecting her parents.

Margaret: Yeah, which is kind of illegal. That’s a little bit of a- Right.

heretical necromancy.

Stuart: So if her parents were dead, dead, would she still have this susceptibility to him?

Margaret: I think if she knew him, potentially, because she’s got that double level, right? Like, she would still have that sense of belonging from home. So it, it wouldn’t be something that she’s, that’s quite as interwoven into her experience.

But I think if someone had offered [00:12:00] her the chance to learn alchemy and, and medicine and mathematics and all of that, I think she would be very interested in that.

Stuart: Okay. Why?

Margaret: I imagine that someone who has the brain of a lifelong learner but no access to knowledge would feel very stifled.

Stuart: Okay. And what were educated women...

What was the society’s view of an educated woman in Florence?

Margaret: It depended on her status.

Stuart: Right. Okay. So let’s talk about that.

Margaret: Yeah. So I mean, it, the Alchemist, who’s really probably more of a physician who does some alchemy, but I haven’t named him yet, and I’m still kind of like, you know, researching around him and stuff like that.

But- Yeah ... I’m just gonna call him the Alchemist for clarity’s sake. He has a palazzo. He’s not without status, but he’s not, he’s also not one of, like, the ruling families that contribute to the Signoria of Florence, right?

Jennie: Right. ‘

Margaret: Cause Florence at this time is basically an [00:13:00] oligarchy, though the main ruling family is the Medici, ‘cause they have all the money, or they have the most money or the most control of the money.

So, um, so he’s not one of those families, so he’s not, like, super politically involved in that way, but he is wealthy. So she has status. She would be someone that Savonarola would, would go after for having vanities, right? Fine clothing, paintings, stuff like that.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: All of that would be something that she would have to give up and, and does.

But for living with the Alchemist, she has this sort of permission.

Stuart: So let’s think about... So I wrote a few things down. Do you think this story is more about belonging, integration, grief, autonomy, or disillusionment?

Margaret: I think it’s most about disillusionment.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: Okay. All those other things are in there, but of those, I would say disillusionment.

And what do you do with that [00:14:00] after, after the other shoe drops, you know? Like, how a character, how a person can continue living and have some kind of hope for their life-

Stuart: Right. Okay ...

Margaret: when everything they believe in has...

Stuart: Okay. So let’s come back to belonging then- Okay ... because she’s disillusioned because she is living with the Alchemist.

He’s doing his thing. She’s learning things. She... I mean, chapter one is her crawling through sewage- ... trying to get something to help her resurrect her dead parents. And then she finds out that he actually killed her parents accidentally doing- Yeah, well,

Margaret: prudently

Stuart: So-

Margaret: He didn’t murder them, but

Stuart: you know.

Right. Okay. So-

Margaret: We’ll play manslaughter or medical malpractice.

Stuart: So in terms of sense of belonging with him, is it purely predicated on what she’s trying to achieve in terms of resurrecting her parents? What does belonging look like to her as the story opens?

Margaret: I, [00:15:00] I definitely think that she does care about him.

She does see him as probably more like an uncle, you know? Yeah. ‘Cause she, she honestly believes she’s going to be able to bring her parents back to life at first. Of course, she won’t be able to, but that’s one of the many disillusionments that she suffers. But for her, she, she does have affection for him, and he has affection for her.

You know, both of them are in a position where they don’t really have a lot of family.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: You know, I haven’t decided why he doesn’t have family around yet, ‘cause the family unit was so important in Renaissance Italy- Yeah ... that I, I need to do some more character work on him and kind of figure out exactly why he’s such, such a loner, as it were.

Um- And if indeed I want him to be that. That might change. I know he doesn’t have any children, so he sees her as his daughter, but she sees him kind of like as an uncle. So there is affection there, but I think a lot of it comes from the fact that honestly, without him, she’d probably starve to death. All

Stuart: right.

Margaret: Okay. And I actually, I noted [00:16:00] this down when somewhere, somewhere in, in response to your letter that, uh, in the first chapter I want to go back in and have her remember what starvation feels like.

Stuart: Ooh, okay. ‘

Margaret: Cause I think that bringing her parents back, if that worked, which is, like I said, it won’t, you know, she would leave the Alchemist.

So I mean, like her parents were poor. They were, they were moving from village to village doing, um, you know, field labor basically. Mm-hmm. So it’s not like there’s a lot of opportunity for her to- Mm ... be well off. She, she would have to give up her, her vanities, and her access to knowledge, and her access to regular food and, um, you know, a safe, warm environment and all of this.

So bringing them back has a lot of risk for her, and she would probably have to give up the caring relationship that she has with the Alchemist, but she’s willing to try it.

Stuart: Okay. Why? ‘Cause it seems like she’s in quite a good place, and not that many orphans [00:17:00] are running around trying to resurrect their parents if they’re kind of onto a good thing.

What is it that she doesn’t quite have the sense of belonging? What is it that she’s lacking?

Margaret: The Alchemist doesn’t really see her for who she is. He sees her as someone he cares about in his way, but also as a mind he can cultivate.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: You know, so he’s, he’s training her. She’s his apprentice sort of thing, which, um, and he thinks that she’s going to help him find this cure.

His love is driven by his ambition. Mm-hmm. And she feels that. She, she senses that. You know, that it’s not, it’s not the same love she got from her parents.

Stuart: Right. So is it unconditional love?

Margaret: Yeah. With that she had with her parents? Yes.

Stuart: Yeah. Okay.

Margaret: Is it unconditional with the Alchemist? I would say not. It has its conditions.

And you know, there’s, there’s also, by this point I’m sure she’s used to the different [00:18:00] culture of living in a wealthy home, but there’s different rules, right? Mm-hmm. So there was a large learning curve when she was adopted by this man- Mm ... of how to exist in this world that was so different to her that she would not have even been granted access to.

As a farm hand, she would never have been in a palazzo in Florence.

Stuart: So let’s, let’s, let’s think about like the deal breakers then. Okay. So she’s with an Alchemist who’s doing experiments. She knows people are dying?

Margaret: Not yet.

Stuart: Right. Okay. So she thinks he’s curing everybody?

Margaret: Either that or that he’s failing to cure them and that the syphilis is killing them.

Like, just that the cure didn’t work is what she thinks

Stuart: Okay. So it’s not the cure that’s driving her away, it’s the discovery that her parents died at his hands via his experimental work.

Margaret: Yes, and that he never told her.

Stuart: Right. Okay.

Margaret: The breach of trust, yeah.

Stuart: Okay. So I can see why she’s going to bolt-

Margaret: Yeah

Stuart: him. So what makes her [00:19:00] susceptible to Savonarola?

Margaret: Yeah. So she’s just left an experience where, you know, if she stays, she has to be okay with using people in this way. And when she meets Savonarola, he’s preaching about the purity of the soul and how the elites of Florence are using the, the o- the oppressed and, and you know how they’re corrupt and this and that.

And so she’s just come from an elite home where that’s happening.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: So to her, she sees him as like the broom of that at first. Right.

Stuart: Okay. Now that’s, that’s fine. You can, you can say, you know, “Good on you” and keep walking, right? So then why does she feel like she then needs to belong to his, his thing and what he’s trying to do?

Is she just not putting the, putting the two things together that effectively he is doing [00:20:00] the same thing? He’s sacrificing people, the greater good, the uncounted.

Margaret: Yeah. Well, it, so it hasn’t escalated to that point yet. At this point, he’s preaching about, um, how Florence needs to purify itself, and she d- she sees that as just getting rid of the Vanities and, and being more godly.

And she also sees safety in joining this group, right? So when she leaves The Alchemist, she has no one at all. And she meets Lena first in kind of a, a, a scene I have had in my mind for a while, where she, she helps Lena, but it’s like, it’s... Lena is trying to get medicine for somebody who has syphilis, for one of the other, the courtesans, and Elliana stops her from getting duped, basically buying snake oil.

You know, like, there were so many people making fake everything. So she stops her getting duped, but Lena still doesn’t trust her, then they part ways. It’s a very kind of like preliminary interaction between them. But she realizes in, in that happening that [00:21:00] while she’s prepared to spot the charlatans who are pretending to be, you know, basically pharmacists-

Stuart: Mm-hmm

Margaret: she’s not prepared to live in the world on her own. You know, like her parents died when she was little. She never had- Mm-hmm ... to find work herself, and, you know, she has no prospects by herself.

Stuart: So where else could she go in Florence to be safe?

Margaret: She could go to a nunnery, but you usually have to pay your way in.

You know, you can’t just join for free. And I’m sure she probably has some money on her, but not a ton. Yeah. Not enough to, to pay for a living there. And the other option that is available to her is to become a courtesan and, and put herself in a position where she could contract this disease very easily.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: So, you know, she doesn’t have a whole lot of options from what I’ve researched- Mm ... so far. This could change a little bit as I continue to research. But from what I’ve learned so far, these are her choices, which are pretty slim pickings. I

Stuart: think it’s going to be important to make her proactive, [00:22:00] and it feels like her kind of, “Well, I’ll just fall in with these guys,” doesn’t feel like she’s really making a conscious decision.

It feels like- Okay ... she’s, she’s avoiding failure rather than moving towards success.

Margaret: Okay. Yeah, I can work with that. I don’t have an answer for it right now, but I can work with that. Okay.

Stuart: All right. Okay. Yeah. I think, and I mean, I just, I just think, I think characters can make ridiculous decisions. Yeah.

But I think as long as we understand Why they’re making them. You know? It’s like- Yeah ... it’s like teenagers going into the basement in a horror movie, right? Yeah. We can all be shouting at, at them, but occasionally some movies kind of get it right.

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: And you think oh, okay, yeah, that’s a perfectly valid reason to go down into the basement.

Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I need to do a little bit more research on why people join cults, and also what is attractive about like, um, strongman [00:23:00] politics to people.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: Because that’s sort of how I’m thinking of crafting the Savonarola crew, is sort of like a, a little bit of a mix between those. So yeah, I, I think that’s a really valid point.

I don’t 100% have an answer for it yet, but I can definitely continue to, to work on that.

Stuart: What degree did it tie in with her appearance?

Margaret: What do you mean?

Stuart: Just being reunited with them in a different way

Margaret: Well, I guess maybe like getting to heaven. One of the things that Savonarola was not pleased with were plenary indulgences, right?

Mm-hmm. Which was the elite way of ensuring they would get into heaven. So finding another path, yeah, that, that could work. That could work, because by this point she’s realized she can’t resurrect them, and, you know, definitely if she tried outside of the alchemist lab, she would be discovered and burned for

Stuart: heresy.

Right.

Margaret: Like, the only reason she isn’t is because he cares about her and, and you know, when he finds out what she’s tried to do, he [00:24:00] doesn’t, he doesn’t turn her in. So you know, it would also probably... If he did, it would also probably lead to him being burned for

Jennie: heresy.

Margaret: So it’s a little bit of self-protection there, but also- Yeah

care for her. But yeah, that’s definitely worth thinking about. I, I could see that, um, that playing nicely off of how she tried to reconnect with them while living with the alchemist.

Stuart: I just, I just think there could be something in there if you’re-

Margaret: Yeah ...

Stuart: talking about lives and bodies and souls.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: And if that’s your kind of key into her, that when we- if the first thing we see her is trying to do is resurrect her parents, or at least gather the materials that she needs- Yeah

to try and resurrect her parents, what, what are we getting out of that, that first chapter? Is it that I need to belong and I need my parents to belong, or is, is... what’s her kind of center of gravity? Mm. And if she absolutely feels that she needs to be with her parents to belong, then [00:25:00] if she were to see some kind of opportunity with, with him, I’m just gonna call him Rolly, ‘cause I, I can’t keep saying- Rolly.

I didn’t think of him like

Margaret: that the entire time I’m working on this book. I love it.

Stuart: I, yeah, I, I was looking at a picture thinking, “Oh, I’m gonna have to say Savonarola- Savonarola ... like all the way for an hour.” Let’s, let’s just call him Rolly. Okay. So yeah, I, I do think there could be something in there that you could maybe just, just investigate.

Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I wrote it down. Yeah?

Stuart: Okay, brilliant. I like it. I mean, ultimately you are the goddess of your own story, right?

Margaret: Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart: I, I just see something in there.

Margaret: Yeah, no, I think it’s definitely worth looking into, for sure. Um- ‘

Stuart: Cause there is that kind of- And considering ... seduction of the- Wh- which one of them do you f- does...

Obviously, I know that Rolli is a real figure.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: But which one of them, in your mind, in the book right now feels more real and [00:26:00] multi-dimensional?

Margaret: I think probably because he’s more of a character of my own creation and not someone I need to research more, at first, the Alchemist.

Stuart: Right. Okay.

Margaret: But I have like, I, I have books about Savonarola, I- or Rolli.

I have his original writings and prophecies. I just haven’t had the chance to read through them yet, so-

Stuart: Right ...

Margaret: I think he’s going to become more rounded as I go. The, the main exposure I have to him, which obviously was dramatized and, and changed, was in the show, The Borgias. I think they did an interesting job.

From what I’ve learned already, they, they changed history for their own means, and I have no problem with that when it comes to fiction. Yeah. But, uh, I certainly don’t wanna rely on that as my source material.

Stuart: And then if you were to, to sit in judgment of them, would you judge them? I just, I just think as writers, we need to be really careful that we don’t judge our villains.

Margaret: Yeah. I mean, I honestly [00:27:00] think even though I did describe Savonarola as not having as much of a conscience, I do think both of them thought they were doing things for the greater good.

Stuart: Yes.

Margaret: I think that they both thought that, like, this was the righteous path.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: You know? I mean, Savonarola thinks he, he’s getting messages directly from God telling him to do this, and at the same time, whatever was true about Rodrigo Borgia, that’s Savonarola’s main opponent in his- Mm

political sphere, right? He did a lot of things a pope shouldn’t do.

Stuart: Yes.

Margaret: Mainly having a bunch of children. But like, so I, I can see why for him, he’s doing the righteous thing.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: And, you know, I think maybe it could have started out good. You know, like, let’s purify our souls, let’s not focus on commodities so much, and let’s not be ruled by money so much.

But it pretty quickly shifts into let’s stone all the gay people. Let’s- Yeah ... you know, burn all the [00:28:00] art. You know, like it, it takes off in a-

Stuart: Yes ...

Margaret: a weird direction.

Stuart: Yeah. No, no, absolutely. I mean-

Margaret: Yeah ...

Stuart: the world is on fire right now.

Margaret: Yes, exactly. And the alchemist to me is, is... You know, he genuinely thinks he’s gonna find a cure to this dis- this horrible disease that rots you from the inside.

And he believes if he can find the right balance of cinnabar, which is the mercury that you burn when you’re fluxing people, that he can do it without killing them. So he’s trying to find... He also thinks he can make an anti, like a, like a, like almost like a vaccine.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Using this, where people can come for, for treatment ahead of time.

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: And then not even get the disease. So he really thinks that he’s going to be saving people a lot of agony and eventual madness, you know? Mm. But he’s killing them in the process, and he just thinks that, “If I can just find the right mixture, you know, the right level-” That’s safe for people, [00:29:00] then all of this will be worth it.

All of it will be okay. And, you know, I don’t think that he’s a horrible person. He goes to confession every week. He feels poorly about the people who don’t survive, but he does feel like it’s for the greater good. So he... It’s, it’s sort of like, um, is a utilitarian wrong? You know? Yeah, so I, I try not to judge them.

I don’t think some of their actions are great.

Stuart: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I know, I, I just-

Margaret: Also living in such a different world, you know? They just came out of the Black Plague, and- Yeah ... the view on death was different too, so.

Stuart: Yeah, I, I think the more you can make him a man rather than an idea-

Margaret: Mm-hmm ...

Stuart: I think that will really, really help the reader kinda get in there and then be able to make their own judgments.

Margaret: Yes. They can judge.

Stuart: Yeah.

Margaret: I just wanna present.

Stuart: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I, I think if you do it, there’s this weird way that it kind of comes off the page, and suddenly it’s your voice and not their experience.

Margaret: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: Okay, so [00:30:00] yet she becomes disillusioned with him and goes back to the alchemist. Now, I’m, I’m...

What is gonna stop this story from becoming a, a thing of, I think of, uh, L- Lemony Snicket? What, what is stopping this from becoming a series of disillusionments?

Margaret: Because the stakes get a little... Well, now I haven’t read Lemony Snicket, but things get a little higher every time. And also, by the time she goes back to the alchemist, she thinks she can convince him to stop doing this.

Stuart: Why?

Margaret: I don’t know yet. It’s a good question. I’m sure it has something to do with her parents. I’m sure, you know, may- maybe she gets access to his records and she’s like, “Look at how many people have died.” You know? Like, you’re not finding the cure, you know?

Stuart: Doesn’t she know this already?

Margaret: She doesn’t 100% know it because the fluxing is new.

It’s a new treatment-

Stuart: Right. Okay ...

Margaret: that he’s trying. It basically started around the time that the book starts, that people started doing this. So they had other mercury [00:31:00] treatments, but because this isn’t ingesting the mercury, he thinks that he can find the right amount- Right ... that it won’t kill people.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: He knows mercury is deadly, but he thinks that this is a new way of delivering it, that, you know- Mm-hmm ... “I- I’m only making them sit here till they start drooling like a mad person,” you know what I’m saying? Like they are, like they have rabies, you know? Says, “I’m only making them sit here, do this until then.

They’ll be fine. It’s totally great. It’s fine.” So, you know, he- He thinks that he, he genuinely thinks he’s going to find this cure/antidote

Stuart: Mm-hmm.

Margaret: And I think that when she comes back... Yeah, I kinda like that. She’s gonna... I’m writing that down.

Stuart: Because again, she needs a concrete reason that the reader can get behind that she would go back to The Alchemist.

Now I, I know that obviously isn’t the end game. Yeah. The end game is that she eventually just leaves Florence.

Margaret: Well, the [00:32:00] reason that she goes, that she goes back, like the external reason, is that she discovers Lena is volunteering to be one of these people who is trying to basically get like vaccinated against syphilis, and they’ve become friends by this point.

So she, she really thinks that Lena will die

Stuart: What do you mean by going back to him then?

Margaret: Going back to the alchemist? She goes there to try and stop, initially to stop Lena, and she can’t convince her. This is just coming to me now. She goes to the, the alchemist’s records to convince her, and then uses that to try to convince him that it’s not working.

Stuart: Right. Okay.

Margaret: How does that sound?

Stuart: Yeah. I think as long as we really understand what is forcing Eliana to make these, these decisions that move her from one system into the next system, and then move her back to the original system, and it feels like the return to the alchemist kind of needs to feel inevitable.

Margaret: Okay. I [00:33:00] think, um, if I can play up the Lena bit- Mm-hmm ... a little bit- Yeah ... it will because they first meet when Lena’s trying to find a cure and buying it from a charlatan. And-

Stuart: So there’s that. So that’s where it kind of becomes personal because I really- Yeah ... think, think the more you can fold a story in on itself, and I think, you know, myself, I write historical fiction and speculative fiction, and it’s, it’s so easy to kind of sprawl outwards- Yeah, yeah

into all of these glorious wonderful things. But I think if you can fold that story back in and back in and back in on itself, then we definitely need to talk about Lena because she has this kind of... She’s like a lever- Yeah ... if you think about the story engine, okay? So what does she offer Eliana that no one else does?

Margaret: She offers her unconditional friendship. Basically, the kind of love that her parents offered. Not right away because she doesn’t trust Eliana [00:34:00] right away ‘cause Eliana is elite-looking, and Lena doesn’t trust that. So ultimately, though, they do become very close friends, li- like a sisterhood, you know?

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Sort of. And

Stuart: the- So what is that? What is that point? When does she kind of really begin to see Lena, and when does Lena really begin to see Eliana?

Margaret: It happens, I think, when Lena tends to Eliana a- and takes care of her. Maybe I put that in the, in the inside outline. It’s, you know, somewhere. Okay, so Eliana nearly passes out in the street.

This is when she’s already in with Zev and Roli’s, or Roli’s crew. Finds her and brings her back to the, the brothel and nurses her back to health in secret. So this is when they, they start to actually, like, see beyond what each other is in the world- Okay ... to the world of men, as it were.

Stuart: Okay. So- If we stripped away all of this historical surface, what is this book really [00:35:00] about?

Margaret: It is about extricating oneself from the systems that use us.

Stuart: Okay. So your view is that Eliana won’t end up in any other system?

Margaret: Well, she has hope of not ending up in another system. I mean, they leave Florence.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Right? I’m sure they’ll end up in another system. I’m sure of that. Is she sure of that? No, I think she has, um, uh, enough hope and, and naivete to, to think that maybe she won’t, you know?

Stuart: Yeah, yeah

Margaret: Even, so she’s in an interesting position because she can remember the hunger of being poor, but the elite also have this view of anyone who’s, like, working on the farms, that it’s like this, this lovely, peaceful, easy life, which of course it’s not. Mm-hmm. You know? So the kind of, kind of like pastoral grass is greener.

The, you know, they used to write poems about it, about how wonderful it must be to- Right ... to [00:36:00] be out in the fields all day instead of having to deal with political intrigue and all of that stuff.

Stuart: Okay. So if this was an... If this was a romance- Okay ... this would be a, a happy for now ending, rather than a- Yes

happy ever after ending.

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: Okay. Right. So what I’m really interested in now is what is costing Eliana, what’s the cost of her leaving, and what is the cost of her staying? If she stays in Florence, but still sits outside these two systems-

Margaret: She starves ...

Stuart: what, what’s the cost of doing that? Right. Okay. Now what’s the- Her own body.

Okay. So what is the cost of her leaving?

Margaret: Potentially that, but maybe not. She hopes that, that won’t be it. The cost of her leaving is the unknown, I think. Do you know the, the Biblical story of Lilith?

Stuart: Satan’s wife?

Margaret: No.

Stuart: I mean, d- do you know what my, my only- What? ... my only exposure is the character Lilith in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Margaret: [00:37:00] Okay. On Netflix.

Stuart: All

Margaret: right.

Stuart: Was she like- Who is Lilith? ... the second woman or something?

Margaret: The first woman.

Stuart: Ah, she was the first woman. Right. Okay.

Margaret: And she was created equal to Adam out of dust, instead of being made out of Adam’s rib.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Eve was, right? And she refused to be subjugated to Adam’s will, so she elected to leave Eden and of her own accord.

So she self-exiles, and what happens to her then becomes a number of myths. Like, some people are like she’s the first vampire, she’s the mother of demons, she’s Satan’s wife. You know? Like, all manner of horrible rumors. So I won’t say her life was easy, but she was free of that subjugation, and that’s kind of the vibe that I’m feeling for the end of this book right now.

Stuart: Okay. So what does belonging... If Eliana’s goal is to belong, what does leaving give her? Like, where is she belonging if she’s leaving?

Margaret: She’s belonging with Lena. She has this sisterhood with her. They leave together. [00:38:00] Okay.

Stuart: And

Margaret: I think that- So

Stuart: my-

Margaret: Or, sorry, go ahead.

Stuart: So, so is belonging now a person, another place, or a system?

Margaret: Correct.

Stuart: It’s found-

Margaret: It’s found family, yeah. And I think the other important note for Eliana is she’s not only after belonging, she’s after belonging with integrity.

Stuart: Right. Okay.

Margaret: You know? So she could stay in Florence and belong. She could stay, you know, among the weepers with Savonarola. Yeah. She could stay with the alchemist.

Neither of them are pushing her away, like actively- Okay ... exiling her, but she can’t stay there and have integrity.

Stuart: Right. So what, what is she mistaking then for, let’s say, love, faith, or safety in these two different systems?

Margaret: Okay. Well, I think in a lot of ways she’s mistaking safety for love [00:39:00] in both situations.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Okay? Um, I think she’s... You know, she feels special with the alchemist, especially as a woman- Yeah ... a young woman, uh, to be able to access this knowledge and learn.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: So that feels very special to her. Um, I think, you know, with Savonarola she, she has several moments where she speaks to him directly one-on-one.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: And that also makes her feel kind of special and, and loved in a way, um, ‘cause not everybody gets to do that. Obviously he can’t talk to everybody one-on-one or he’d have no time to be preaching his, his prophets, right? As his, as his number of followers grow, he can’t hang out with everybody all the time on a one-on-one level.

But she has access to him that others do not have.

Stuart: So her inquisitive mind, the cost is that she’s unlikely to kind [00:40:00] of find that situation again.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: As, as a young woman with an inquisitive mind, she is effectively giving that up. Yeah. And I guess she kind of gives it up twice. She gives it up when she first leaves the alchemist, and then when she decides to, to leave for Florence, ‘cause as you say, he’s not trying to get rid of her.

Margaret: Right. He does, I mean, he does want her to marry. Especially once he realizes she’s trying to engage in necromancy and it could get them both killed. And like, “Maybe we need to speed this up and find you a husband.” ‘

Stuart: Cause husbands fix everything.

Margaret: Well, yes and no. It would get her out of his house, I guess that would make it less likely he burns for, for heresy.

But I mean, he, he’s not insistent on it, it’s just like a, you know, you’re past the age when you should’ve been doing this. Like, if you’re not gonna follow in my footsteps and do this the way I do it, then let’s, let’s get you on track for a successful life in another way. Um, and of course she, she doesn’t wanna do [00:41:00] that because she wants...

She, she’s focused on other things. But, you know. And also, I don’t want, I don’t want the story to have a romantic undertone. I did think about making her character male at one point, but I felt like with Lena that would make- Mm-hmm ... an expectation of a romance between them, and it doesn’t, it no longer feels right for the story.

Stuart: Yeah. And it is interesting to see how that’s changed from the original- Yeah ... story as well, ‘cause that was- Yeah ... romantasy.

Margaret: It was. It was. And then we even talked about it going in the direction of a Pride and Prejudice retelling. So this is quite different.

Stuart: Okay. Okay. So right now, where do you feel the story’s kind of foggiest?

Margaret: Where do I feel it’s foggiest? I feel it’s foggiest around things I, I need to do more research on before... You know, like I, I, I went to the letter. I feel really good about your suggestion to think about not making Lena a point of view character, and I’m thinking I won’t, because I [00:42:00] think... You know, when I, when I started to write as Elianna- Mm-hmm

I think her point of view is just so strong. And then the other thing that I think could be interesting to explore another layer of oppression is to have Lena be a POC, which then of course I would not want to make her a POV character. And that would be- Why, why

Stuart: is that?

Margaret: Why wouldn’t I wanna make her a POV character?

Uh, because I’m not a person of color, so I, I-

Stuart: Okay ...

Margaret: I don’t feel like- I don’t feel like that’s something I need to be doing. Of sitting in her point of view. I think it’d be more true to, to my understanding of the world, Eliana see her one way and then start to see her another way, as far as from what I’ve seen among other Caucasian people.

Stuart: Okay. So is Lena gonna have the wherewithal to pay for this vaccination, or is the vaccination basically free because it’s an experiment?

Margaret: It’s free ‘cause it’s an [00:43:00] experiment.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: There’s also, so in alchemy ... So I’ve been listening to this podcast, The History of Alchemy, which is great, and it takes all of my strength not to listen to episodes that are about people that happen after my story.

Just like- I

Stuart: love historical fiction writers. But- I don’t need to know that for my story, but-

Margaret: But ...

Stuart: I’m gonna spend six hours researching it anyway.

Margaret: Yeah. Um, I won’t say that I’m always successful in that endeavor, especially if I’m driving and-

Stuart: I’m exactly the same. Exactly the same ...

Margaret: but one of the things that’s come up in listening to it is the idea that alchemists had at this time that they shouldn’t charge for their services.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Because there was also, for a lot of people, a spiritual component to alchemy, and a lot of times they would, in order to avoid being burned for heresy, they’d be like, “This will work if God wills it.” Like, “I’m gonna do all this experimentation, and it’ll only work if it’s okay with God, so don’t burn me.”

It’s like that sort of thing, and I feel like that’s where the alchemist in my story sits, you [00:44:00] know? ‘Cause he is a religious man, and he does have faith, and I feel like he wouldn’t charge for this, ‘cause he, he does understand that he’s using people’s bodies.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: You know? And that there’s a cost there.

He’s just- Mm-hmm ... okay with the cost, ‘cause ... Well, not okay with it, but he’s willing to do it for what he sees as the greater good. So I don’t think he would charge for that.

Stuart: Okay. How is he able to function in the society then? Where’s, where’s his income?

Margaret: Inherited wealth. He probably has farmlands somewhere in Tuscany.

Like I said, I have to, I have to do more thinking about his family and, like, where he actually comes from. It’s interesting because some alchemist families that were wealthy encouraged the study of alchemy and funded it, and others did not. Yeah. And usually those were the alchemists who had to find a patron, and be like, “If you give me a little gold, I’ll make you a lot of gold.”

Stuart: But- Sounds like an investment banker.

Margaret: Exactly. Very much like the Medici, right? But of course, what they were producing [00:45:00] wasn’t actual true gold.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah.

Margaret: And it would take a while too, because they believed that gold had to mature over time. So it would take like a year to make a tiny little bit of gold, of gold.

And for anyone who’s listening to this and not seeing, I just air quoted

Stuart: that. Right. So let’s think about next steps.

Margaret: Okay.

Stuart: So we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about kind of the distinction between the alchemist and

Margaret: Savonarola. Yay, you did it. Good job.

Stuart: Yay. Um, I was on Google going, “You have the pron- pronunciation guide.”

Margaret: Savonarola,

Stuart: Savonarola.

Margaret: Yeah. I mean, it, it is phonetic. You have to just kind of like, let it, let it roll.

Stuart: Yeah. Savonarola. Okay. And I like that his first name sounds like Geronimo, but it’s not.

Margaret: Yeah. Geronimo.

Stuart: O- okay. So I really bo- what I really want you to do is, is, is think about those systems, not just in thematic terms.

Really want you to think about emotionally and [00:46:00] dramatically the kind of scenes that are in there, and I’ve seen them in your inside outline, and I think your inside outline has good cause and effect. I would just like to see the emotional piece coming up a bit.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Yeah? Yeah. And I know, I know more of that is really gonna come into the actual writing and getting the emotions on the page.

I really want you to think about emotionally kind of where is she? And this is where we come to, we need to think about the cost of decisions. So- I think, you know, the second next step I gave you was, like, to keep asking what her integrity costs both in practical, embodied, and lived terms. Yeah. I always want you to think about what is she sacrificing as she makes each of her decisions because everything that she’s doing she’s losing a little bit of herself-

Margaret: Yeah

Stuart: although she’s getting closer to, to the truth and Lena and the decision that she’s [00:47:00] ultimately going to make. But then the third piece is really pressure testing that causality around her shifts.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Um, like I said, if ... I don’t know if I said it in this, in this conversation, but elsewhere I say, you know, for every decision your character makes think of you are, you are their defense lawyer.

Margaret: Oh, I like that. Right? Yeah.

Stuart: So even if they’re making a stupid, stupid decision you need to try and defend that, okay? Um, which means the character must feel like- It’s either a desperate decision, if it’s a really stupid decision.

Margaret: Yep.

Stuart: I’m trying to escape the monster. I, you know, like, I- the basement is the only place I can go.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Um, only to find a bigger monster. But where was I going with this? Yeah, so all of those big decisions, even if they’re dumb ones, a reader will accept that if they really, really understand why the character’s doing it, like what their [00:48:00] internal logic is. And especially when we’re g- talking about going back to the alchemist, I know it’s to kind of try and s- save Lena, but also something that you said around not being, she’s not being exorcized from them.

She’s not being excluded. So we really need to understand, okay, I’m gonna give up everything. I’m gonna give up my access to knowledge, and I’m gonna go into a world where I don’t know if I’ll ever belong anywhere in any other system. That’s a big decision to make.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Right? So all of that has to be building towards that.

And then we’ve already talked about it, which is kind of getting Lena’s, deciding whether or not she’s gonna be a POV character, and it sounds like you’ve made some, some decisions around that.

Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I, I, I tried to like, get myself into a scene with her POV, and I just, I couldn’t get there, you know?

Yeah. Which to me, that’s pretty telling. Like Eliana, I dropped right in. Like, we’re gonna [00:49:00] get visceral, we’re gonna get weird, we’re gonna, you know. And with Lena, it was just like, “Hi, how’s it going, Lena?” So yeah, I think that was very, um, astute. And, you know, I, I think I’m someone who loves multiple point of view, so when a new character jumps out, I’m like, “Oh, do you want to be a point of view character?”

Stuart: Yeah, same.

Margaret: But you’re, I, I think, I think you’re right. As soon as you read it, I was like, “Oh, does she need to be?” And it then, it just start- uh, it, it was something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I was like, “Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think she needs to be.”

Stuart: You’ve got a lot of complex stuff going on here, and you’ve got a lot of layers, and I think if you add another character into that, I think there might be a risk of you saying the same thing-

Margaret: Yeah

Stuart: more than once. We’re seeing two essentially disadvantaged young women, and I don’t know how many variations on a theme you can get from that.

Margaret: Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart: Okay. So we’ve talked for an hour. Does anything feel clearer now?

Margaret: [00:50:00] Yes.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: Yeah, no, it definitely does. And now Sav and Rollo has a fun nickname. No, ev- everything feels a lot clearer, um, because one of the things I love about this process, and about working with you particularly, and one of the reasons I keep handing you things to look at, is because you will ask me those questions, and you ask them in a way that it’s like, it’s okay if I’m like, “I haven’t researched this, and I don’t know.”

But you ask them in a way that’s like, “I need to come up with an answer for that. I need to have a response to that at some point.” You know? And it’s, it... They’re, they’re incisive and get me thinking outside of my own head a little bit. My tendency, I, I feel like I... What’s easy for me in writing is getting to the page, and getting the emotion there, and getting the sensation there-

Jennie: Mm-hmm

Margaret: and the body on the page. But what’s always challenging to me is I, my initial attempt at creating a story is way more bombastic than it needs to be, and way bigger than it needs to be. I always bite off more than I [00:51:00] can chew- Mm-hmm ... which is why your question about Lena as a POV character was such a great question, ‘cause it’s like, oh, this is my eyes being bigger than my stomach on the page again.

It’s like, do I need it to be a 1,200-page book? No, I don’t. I can make the point in a smaller s-

Stuart: Right. Right. And you know, like, like I, like I said earlier, I think if you feel this urge to kind of sprawl, stop yourself and fold it back in. I think the more and more intimate and the more and more human these stories become, the more universal they become.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: And they become accessible for people who aren’t necessarily interested in Florence in 1400. Right. Okay. So what still feels open but kind of usefully open now we’ve had a conversation?

Margaret: Definitely thinking about continuing to differen- differentiate her experiences with The Alchemist and Savonarola, and I think that that’s going to continue to clarify [00:52:00] as I do more research and do more planning around where he comes from.

I don’t really have his origin story yet in mind. Right. I know what he’s like. Mm-hmm. I can picture him. I can hear his voice. I don’t know where or what he comes from yet. I need to do some more character work on him, and this is, this is the interesting thing, for anybody not listening is this is not the point when I would usually have done a blueprint, so it’s been really interesting to do it at this stage before doing the research, because I feel like it’s gonna help direct my research so much

Stuart: more.

Good. Good. Oh, yes, please. Thanks. We see it with spec, spec fiction writers all the time.

Margaret: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it’s so important because, you know, like I said, I, I could go off in so many directions that are interesting, but being able to cherry-pick- Mm-hmm ... what I actually need to build the story is really helpful, and thinking about those two, ‘cause, you know, I, I think it’s very easy when you’re creating a mirror experience in a story for it to become too similar.

Stuart: Yeah.

Margaret: And then it’s like why do you [00:53:00] need both? The story could survive without it. I do think it’s important for this story to have both, but they need to hit her in different ways at different times, and the stakes need to build, so I think what I’m gonna do is I’m going to spend some time on the origin story for The Alchemist.

Okay. Kind of figure him out a little bit more. I’m gonna do my research, and I’m gonna build out two lists of the ways in which Eliana’s choices impact her relationship with each monster, quote, unquote.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: And, you know, I’m... In that list I’m, I’m gonna include, you know, what, what you said here about, you know, what it costs her in practical, embodied, and lived terms, so I’m gonna have that in a list so I can just list it out, and then I’ll come back, you know-

Stuart: Okay

Margaret: through that. So I think, I think that’s, that’s what I’m gonna do to get- To the, you know, in, in addition to the inside outline work that you suggested, ‘cause I, I like that work too. But just as I’m doing my [00:54:00] research, I think that’s a good way to take notes on it. I am someone who, like Eliana, I’ll just find that little rabbit hole, and it’s so fascinating, I just wanna live in it forever, but it doesn’t actually help the story.

Stuart: Oh, good. So okay, so what are the next one to two decisions you’re going to make? Not research, decisions. Next

Margaret: one to two decisions. I wanna make sure that I feel really clear on why Eliana is moving in and out of these situations.

Stuart: Yeah.

Margaret: So, um, I think those are the next deci- like, I, I think we made a lot of progress today on ideas- Yeah

for why she might make them, but I wanna get to a place where I’m like, “No, this is why she did that.”

Stuart: Yeah. And I- And then, yeah ... and I do think there’s something, I know I keep going on about it- ... and it is your story, but I do think there’s something in there about body and soul. Yeah. Definitely, ‘cause The Alchemist is all about the body, and Seven Rule is all about the soul.

Yeah. And- Yeah ... those are

two things that she’s trying to, [00:55:00] well- The first thing she’s trying to do is bodies, resurrect her parents. Is there something you can play with on the, on the soul side?

Margaret: Definitely, ‘cause she’s gotta get the souls into those bodies somehow, right?

Stuart: Yeah. The guy, the guy in Practical Magic.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Like, they resurrect in Practical Magic, like, he’s not really that guy, is he?

Margaret: No.

Stuart: And it happens in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, they bring back one of the guy’s brothers who dies in the mine, and he comes back. Like, it’s him, but it’s not him.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: So yeah, I definitely like that. Okay, right. So last question, if you were going to change only one thing after this call, what would it be?

Margaret: Ooh, that’s such a good question. If I was gonna change one thing after this call, what would it be?

Stuart: Fire from book coaches.

Margaret: Pardon?

Stuart: You said- Fire a book coach.

Margaret: No, never. Never. You are, you are my book coach. Yeah, I mean, like, so long as you want to be.

Stuart: I love your stuff. It’s great.

Margaret: Thank you. If I was [00:56:00] gonna change one thing, I think what I need to change is I, I actually think I need to have her and Lena become friends sooner.

I’m not- Okay ... 100% in love with the way that they do become friends- Okay ... because it doesn’t involve a lot of agency on Eliana’s part. She gets saved by Lena, then she’s like, then they become closer, and it feels very, like, this is a thing that just happened, whereas I think it would be more meaningful if it comes from Eliana’s agency somehow, especially because the mistrust between them.

You know, that, that’s something I came up with when I was gonna have Lena be a POV character.

Stuart: Right.

Margaret: She mistrusts Eliana more than Eliana mistrusts her.

Stuart: Okay.

Margaret: So I’m not sure that I like keeping that as the hinge of their closeness anymore. I, I think, I think taking that out and replacing it with something else and something much sooner.

You know, I might have Lena come to The Alchemist sooner. Um, maybe, I still like the idea of their first meeting being [00:57:00] Eliana stopping her from being, you know, duped by this charlatan. But I think having Lena try to go to the alchemist before the end of the book would be interesting- Mm-hmm ... ‘cause it gives Eliana a chance to stop her if she suspects that the mercury is still killing people.

Stuart: You know, I, I would... Have you read Gwen Hayes’ Romancing the Beat?

Margaret: Yes.

Stuart: Okay, marvelous. I would have a look at that-

Margaret: Okay ...

Stuart: through the lens of friendship.

Margaret: Okay. I like that

Stuart: better. ‘Cause there is that, “Oh, there’s this person. Oh, I don’t like that person. Oh, but there’s- Yeah ... something about that person.” Like, I think you could maybe play with that.

Okay. And then Lena becomes this kind of, there’s the golden thread that runs through your story, and Lena’s gently pulling it from her end.

Margaret: I like it.

Stuart: Yeah. Okay.

Margaret: Actually, you suggested that book to me.

Stuart: Did I?

Margaret: You suggested that book to me when this story was going to be the romance scene.

Stuart: See?

Margaret: It [00:58:00] all comes back around.

Stuart: I think you could use it for friendship. Yeah. I, I

Margaret: really do. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Especially between two characters who don’t have that instant trust and connection.

Stuart: Yeah. There’s definitely something we could, we could learn in there. Well, thank, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Um-

Margaret: Likewise. Thank you ...

Stuart: I always learn something from you, as much as, you know, I g- you know, I

Margaret: g-

Stuart: A- as much as I coach you, this is why I love working with historical fiction writers, because it’s just... I mean, we’ve Rome, we’ve looked at Ancient Rome, haven’t we? We’ve looked- Yeah ... at Atlantis. I know that’s not, you know, but we often, we talk about theory and that kind of stuff, and then obviously I’m learning stuff about Florence in 1494.

Margaret: Yeah.

Stuart: Yeah. Marvelous. Like being schooled every day. Well, thank you. All right. So, you know, the door’s always open if, if, you know, something pops up, just, just, just let me know, yeah?

Margaret: Yeah. Thank you.

Stuart: All right. Always a pleasure.

Margaret: Likewise.

Jennie: Thanks for listening to this [00:59:00] Hot Seat Coaching episode. We’re going to have Margaret and Stuart back another time, so stay tuned for that.

And in the meantime, let’s get back to work and finish what matters.

Outro: The hashtag amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [01:00:00] work

Nash suggests shifting authority to lived experience and reframing the book as a framework for how couples navigate diagnosis and decision-making—using structures like key decisions, conversations, or “dates”—while keeping strong scene-based storytelling. Brenna agrees to substantially revise, aiming for a helpful stance that supports patients and partners with questions to ask, teamwork, and process rather than prescriptive medical directives.

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Jennie Nash: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie, and I want to ask you a question. What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with your book right now? Maybe you’re struggling to even get started. Maybe you’ve written thousands of words and lost your way. Maybe you finished a draft and you’re overwhelmed by how to revise it. That’s exactly why I’m running the Blueprint Summer Challenge starting July tenth.

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And paid podcast subscribers will also receive access to live coaching sessions featuring me and author accelerator coaches that I’ve handpicked to help with this challenge. We’ll be diving into specific blueprint steps, answering questions, and coaching writers through real challenges in real time. If you’d like to spend this [00:01:00] summer making actual progress on your book, you’ll find all the details in the show notes.

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most.

Jennie Nash: This is a hot seat coaching episode where we work through a real writing challenge in real time, and today I’m so excited to be talking to Brenna Humphries because we’ve almost literally never spoken before.

We just met, and you have a book proposal, and I’m gonna be coaching you on it the way I would coach, um, someone in our certification program. Practicum Two is coaching a full book proposal, so I’m just gonna do that, and we’re gonna see what happens, so [00:02:00] welcome Brenna.

 Brenna Humphries: Thank you. I am, I am so excited to be here.

And thank you. I’ve been doing Jennie Nash crash course the past several days- ... so I’m really excited.

Jennie Nash: Well, thank you for being willing, um, to, to be in the hot seat. It’s so helpful to other people who are learning. And so just to quick set what’s happened before this call is Brenna was about to pitch a proposal for a nonfiction book that she had worked with one of our coaches on a blueprint for, and then built up her proposal using my book Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book.

And, um, I took a look at it and ended up making something like, I don’t know how many notes, but a lot. Um, and sending Brenna a giant, long editorial letter at, I think, midnight last night. So I don’t know how this landed with her yet or anything, so that’s where- I’m here. We’re good. She showed up, so we have some information.

[00:03:00] But, um, I just wanna start with asking- How did that all land with you, and are you okay?

 Brenna Humphries: Oh, I’m so okay. No, I’m, I’m like, I am so grateful because, um, uh, I think you helped me dodge a bullet, first of all. Um, you know, it, your, your comments were right on, and in listening to the hot seat coaching that you’ve been doing with Andrew on the fiction side, I mean, I just, kind of just listening y- to you go through that process, it just reinforced for me how helpful the process is.

And your comments made perfect sense. I think maybe I didn’t put as much writing into the proposal as I clearly should have to articulate what I’m trying to get across with the tone, and I think the duality of the, the book that you’re seeing, the proposal, is so much a reflection of this is me writing it, but it’s got my husband’s voice in there as well.

So I think I, I’m very excited to dig into that with you.

Jennie Nash: Good. Good. Well, [00:04:00] being open, ‘cause I kind of, I kind of came at you pretty hard with some big things that had to change, and when somebody’s just about to pitch, and they’re ready, and they’re geared up, and I think when I first spoke to you a couple days ago, I was even like, “Do it.

Go. Hit send.” You were. Right? And then somebody’s like, “Wait. Stop. May- there might be some problems here.” You know, did you have any sort of a reaction of, “Uh-oh,” or, “I can’t,” or, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” or any, any kind of that reaction?

 Brenna Humphries: Well, certainly not the last one. I know you know what you’re talking about.

Um, yeah, of course. I mean, sh- I- everyone wants to get that feedback of like, “This is great. Hit send,” you know? I mean, of course. But, um, I think that you weren’t saying, “This is a piece of trash. Throw it out the door.” You were saying that it needs some clarification, and I think you know the business way better than I do, so, um, it’s helpful to have that.

And, um, yeah, so I wasn’t, I wasn’t discouraged. And, and I can [00:05:00] sort of see a way out, so I, I think that just getting it there, you know, it’s a little more work. Okay. Been working on it forever. Ready to work some more.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. Well, that’s amazing. Um, the reason I said, “Did you think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?”

is that’s usually my reaction when I get- ... tough feedback. I’m like, “They, they don’t know what they’re talking about.” That’s usually my first reaction, and then I settle down, and I’m like, “Oh, maybe, maybe they do.” Um, okay. So why don’t you ... Let’s talk about just this first big thing, the top priority thing, which is the, there was a- Tone in the proposal, way the proposal was coming across, a structural thing that the proposal was kind of, you know, selling that then was not reflected in the chapters.

So a disconnect between what you were saying you were gonna do and then what you were doing, and a real [00:06:00] through line of, I guess I would just say confusion about what is it? What is this? So you’ve had a tiny bit of time to sit with it. Do you have any clarity on the answer of which of the two you’re feeling?

Not that we’re gonna get rid of one or the other, but the book has to be one thing, right? Like it has to- Yeah ... have a spine or a core or a, a point of view, a stance that’s, that’s one thing. So do you, do you have a sense of that?

 Brenna Humphries: Yes and no. I mean, I, I, I, I’d like to work through it with you. But what I will say my initial reaction was, um, I felt like the proposal part needed to be, um, very salesy and very like, “Look at these huge numbers,” you know, “We’re gonna sell a million copies.”

And so, like, needing to make that, like, argument that this is a book that needs to be written versus the [00:07:00] pages where I feel like I’m talking to this wife or husband or partner or couple and saying, “Oh my God, I know you’re freaking out,” the C word, “Totally get it. And, and you wanna get it out as fast as you can.

But, um, from our experience and our learning and my husband’s research, there are some things you need to know before you just dive in.” And I know it kind of comes across as, as being, um, you know, questioning doctors and, and the establishment and all that. And, and that’s the part I need to work on massaging, because doctors are amazing, and I, I don’t have a problem with them at all.

You need them. Um, but the approach that my husband’s kind of taken is, you know, we’re like the CEO of this little company, right? That is our health and our body and our, you know, relationship and everything. And the doctors kind of work with us, and I don’t want to say for us as employees, but in a way, you know, we’re sort of consumers, and we’re going to them for advice [00:08:00] and help and things we can’t do.

Um, and they are part of a system that’s kind of flawed and is gonna kind of march you down that standard of care path, which, you know, and I, I think I mention it in the opening chapters, I had my eyes opened, like, big time during this process. I have doctors all over my family. I thought, “You know, these guys are looking out for us.

They have our best interests at heart.” And then when I was seeing what my husband was researching and sitting in these offices, there was such a massive disconnect that I was like, “Like, do doctors watch YouTube?” Like, “What’s happening here?” You know? So that’s the, the, I think the two different voices that you’re hearing.

Um- And I’ll just add real quick that I’ve been reading your memoir, if that’s okay, to find out- Oh, sure ...

Jennie Nash: but

 Brenna Humphries: oh my gosh. A- and I think that your approach was just beautiful and so solid. Like, these are the lessons I learned, and I could see anybody who’s been freshly diagnosed with cancer, first of all, grabbing any book they can get their hands on.

But with your sort of memoir [00:09:00] style, and, and I had initially... I know it’s a million things, sorry. I had initially- No, I was- ... kind of written this as more of a memoir, and then I went to this class that was basically saying, “Well, memoirs won’t sell,” especially if you’re a white woman. No memoirs, you know? And so, but, but I think there’s more to it than just a memoir in this particular case anyway.

I think there’s our story, but then there’s also what we learned. So yeah.

Jennie Nash: Yeah.

 Brenna Humphries: Help,

Jennie Nash: help. Um, so, well, first of all, this, there’s the absolutist thing, like memoirs won’t sell, a white woman can’t sell. I mean, when I wrote my book, my memoir about cancer, my, I had an agent, and she told me, “You c- the, the market’s saturated.

You can’t sell a me- a, you know, a cancer book.” Like, you’re gonna hear that kind of language all over the place, and you’re actually gonna hear it from me today, where I have an- Yep ... absolutist thing that I’m gonna say to you. Um- Yep ... any writer, when you hear anything like that from anyone, there is no absolute anything.[00:10:00]

Y- the thing you have to do is write the book you wanna write, and you have to be able to stand behind that book. And if you start watering it down, so this is right, this is the right big thing. If you start watering it down, like, “Well, the agents are gonna want this, and Jennie says that, and this editor says this other thing, and my beta reader said that,” and, you know, you’re just gonna flatten the whole thing out.

So the primary thing is for you to tap into the book that you want to write. And the ab- y- you know, if, if it’s memoir, you know, you’ll find a way to sell the memoir. I mean, like- Mm-hmm ... so it’s, it, you have to start with that. And the absolutist thing that I’m gonna say is that- I, I’m just pausing ‘cause I don’t, I don’t want to be reckless in what I’m about to say, but, but I think I believe it.

I do not think you can sell a book to a traditional publisher that’s ripping [00:11:00] apart the medical system from outside the medical system if you’re not a big influencer. There’s just too much liability, and- Totally hear you. Yeah ... there’s, there’s liability inherent in writing about medicine in, in any form other than, “This is my story.”

Mm-hmm. And you definitely step over the line. And-

 Brenna Humphries: Okay.

Jennie Nash: Yeah ... the, so the thing is that I’m not gonna sit here and say, “Don’t do that.” What I’m gonna say is, if you want to do that, if that’s the book you want to write, you’ve got to know that you’re going into a very risky situation for traditional publishing.

But that just might then dictate the, how you publish, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That might just then mean maybe we don’t go that route. Maybe we go this, a different route. So that’s why the decision of what is it that you really want to, which book do you want to write, and the second point in my letter to you was [00:12:00] about w- what, what’s the promise that you’re giving to the reader?

Mm-hmm. You get to choose that. So when I say all that, do you think, “Okay, it’s more important to me to get the traditional deal than it is to have this,” I mean, I’m gonna just say antagonistic stance?

 Brenna Humphries: Um, well, I, I think a big part of it is I don’t want to have an antagonistic stance. I want to have a helpful stance, and I think there’s an element of anger in terms of trying to, um, get the point across. There are men that are dying for no reason. There are people that are losing their quality of life for no reason.

It, it is terribly upsetting to me that this is happening. I, I don’t want to be some big take-on-the-system person. I want to write the book that if any friend of mine was [00:13:00] going through this, they could read it and they could learn from it and not make mistakes that we could have made.

Jennie Nash: Yeah.

 Brenna Humphries: You know? And I, I feel pretty confident in the way we handled it.

It was terrifying for me because that wasn’t my style at all. That was my husband’s style. But going through it now and having seen how he handled it and how he took really complicated medical terminology and broke it down into something that we could both understand was amazing. So, um, yeah. So I, uh, I don’t know.

I mean, a, a traditional publishing deal would be great, but it’s not like the deal breaker necessarily. I don’t really feel like battling lawsuits for the rest of my life. I just want to help people, you know? Yeah. So I don’t really want to create a book that’s going to be a big litigious thing either. I, I’m not a, I don’t need to take on the system.

I just want to help people. I want people who are in this position to, to kind of feel less afraid and less alone and have- Yeah ... some, you know, things to go into their doctor’s office and the questions to [00:14:00] ask and the things to be ready for.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. Does that make sense? So, um, I don’t think we’ve said it out loud yet in this conversation, but what, um, Brenda’s book is about is prostate cancer.

So, um, and it’s, uh, well, the subtitle is A Couple’s... What is it?

 Brenna Humphries: It’s called Where It Hurts: A Couple’s Guide to Kicking Prostate Cancer.

Jennie Nash: Right. So the publisher’s lawyers, you know, even with that subtitle, which is what I mentioned, are going to be like, “Ooh, you know, can we say this without evidence? Can we say this without...”

Um, so again- Y- y- your, no, your decision about ... Uh, what’s weird is when I read a lot of your writing and I listen to you speak, it doesn’t sound like ... I mean, you just said, “I don’t wanna take on the system. I don- a system. I don’t wanna get, be in this confrontational relationship with the medical community.

I’m writing this to help people.” Like, I hear you, [00:15:00] but in some of the pages, I mean, I have to say, at some points, I was, I was literally like, “Ugh!”

Outro: Like, “

Jennie Nash: Ugh! Oh, you can’t say that.” Oh, no. You know? Like, and I’m, and I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a, you know, anything, but, but it was like that’s, that’s a really bold stance you’re taking.

So- Like, which

 Brenna Humphries: I, I’m curious if, if you recall any of those areas, just so we

Jennie Nash: can kind of- Yeah, let me see if I can go. I’ve got the document- Yeah ... in front of me. Well, even just the subtitle, Kicking Prostrate Cancer. Like, there are books out there, some of which I adore, and I’m gonna try to, I’m gonna try to think of some, because they’re not coming into my brain right now.

But there are books that, that take on all kinds of systems, and, and, you know, put a stake in the ground and say, um, you know, “Don’t go down this path.” And, um, actually I just read a book [00:16:00] called I think it’s called Heal Your Back Pain. It was published in the ‘90s, and I, I think it’s... I can’t remember the doctor’s name, but it was a doctor speaking.

I, I don’t have a back problem. My, one of my best friends does, and I’m read it- Mm-hmm ... ‘cause she read it, and I’m trying to understand and, and help her. But this was a doctor saying the entire medical establishment is treating back pain wrong, and, and his stance was, is, um, it’s an emotional reaction. Mm-hmm.

Your body is having, reacting to the emotions and stress in your life, and if you’re treating it like a structural problem, you’re, you’re going down the wrong path, and everybody’s wrong. I mean, that’s the stance of his book. But because he’s coming from the inside, and he’s got- Mm-hmm ... he had a thousand-patient, um, study that he was doing, he’s able to, to do that, right?

So it’s just gonna be so tricky for you [00:17:00] to, to sell that, that kind of book. So right at the subtitle, that’s, um, that’s what I mean. But even, I remember there was a line where you said, um, even giving advice like, “Don’t do what they say you should do. Take some time before you make a decision,” even that, I feel like every publisher lawyer- publisher’s lawyer is gonna be all over that, and be like, “You can’t give medical advice.

You, you, you’re not allowed,” right? “You’re not a licensed doctor. And what if there’s somebody who needs to do something tomorrow,” right? “And you’re telling them-”

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah ... “

Jennie Nash: don’t?” Right?

 Brenna Humphries: And I think we’re saying from the beginning that we’re not doctors. This is a collection of our research, and it is coming from doctors.

Um, what my husband did, basically, you know, when we got the diagnosis, he locked himself away for, for weeks, which now with AI, I guess [00:18:00] you don’t have to do quite as, quite as long. But he studied the Prostate Cancer Research Institute, which is saying all of this stuff. Um, he watched a lot of YouTube videos, and they weren’t, like, guru of the week.

They were, um, actual medical doctors that were speaking at conferences to other doctors. That was where he looked for his sources. So it is very grounded in actual medical speak, but I totally understand. You know, I don’t want to present myself as a physician in any way. It’s more... A- and so I wonder, ‘cause the, the format that you took with your memoir was very much like these are the lessons I learned going through this process.

These are the things... And I know a lot of them were a little bit more sort of lifestyle versus medical per se, and I’m, and I’m not done. You might have gotten into that a little bit more. But I’m curious if you feel like that type of an approach might be a better way of going about it, sort of saying, not, not saying you should do this, but we did this and we’re glad, and here’s why.[00:19:00]

Jennie Nash: Yes, so that’s a very different approach, is to say, like I’m thinking of a subtitle that would be something like One Couple’s Path to Saving, you know, Their Anatomy, their marriage, their sex life, and their life. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, something, something like that. Like, this is what we did, this is how we did it.

Where you’re not giving advice, you’re not even saying ... See, this is the tricky thing. When people come up to you at a party and they say, whisper, “My husband was just diagnosed too,” or, “I was just diagnosed too,” there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Oh, please, take a hot second. Don’t do what they said.” Um, that’s what people do for each other.

But when you’re putting it in a book-

 Brenna Humphries: Mm-hmm ...

Jennie Nash: you would have to position it much more like, “This is what we did, and we’re so glad we did. And it was only X amount of time, and we understood that,” you know, you have all the [00:20:00] statistics, that in that period of time the cancer wasn’t likely to grow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

“And this is what we did and how we did it and how it changed our decision-making.” You know, that kind of a path would totally mitigate this thing I’m talking about, this ... So what a book coach’s job is at this stage is to say, “What’s gonna get this proposal rejected? And, you know, what’s, what, what are the agents likely to respond to?”

And this would be one way to mitigate the, you know, I won’t touch this with a 10-foot pole, they’re giving medical advice problem. Um, and it also solves the problem of- Even if that wasn’t their reaction, I feel like the next reaction they might have is, “But what kind of book is this? Is this, you know, um, how to, how to

Like, I was really interested in what you were saying about [00:21:00] you and your husband made decisions about your partnership about who would do what, who would take on what task. You tell a really great story about a Thanksgiving, sounds like right after diagnosis, where your husband was locked away doing research, and you were handling the food, and the family, and all the thing.

And, you know, a lot of people would be pissed about that. And, and you were like, “This is my, what I can do right now.” Like, that stuff to me was really interesting, and, um, you could talk about that all day long in a book, right? Mm. “This is what we did. This is why we did it. This is what it felt like.” Um, you know, w- you could do that s- there’s so many ways you could approach it in that way.

But again, it has to be the book you wanna write. So we, you can’t just respond to what I ... You know, it, like, if inside you’re feeling, “But we wanna tell people what to do,” you can. You just have to go into the pitch process knowing, “Okay, we’re gonna pitch [00:22:00] 30 agents, and 20 of them are gonna say, ‘Yeah, no. Can’t, can’t do it for that reason.’”

You know? Uh, which is, if you go in knowing that, that’s okay. So it’s, if that’s what you really wanna, wanna do, you should, you should embrace that. Um, like, is the idea of rejigging the whole thing to be one couple’s path through, you know, a year, uh, a, uh, a year of battling prostate cancer, is that ... Do you think, “Yeah, I can’t go back,” or do you think, “No, I, that’s something I could do”?

 Brenna Humphries: Um, I think it’s something I could do. Of course, you know, my head’s going a million directions while you’re talking. Um, I, I think it’s very much about our story anyway. I, and I, I think neither one of us, again, says that we are doctors, and one thing that we wrestled with quite a bit is that we know that a lot of the techniques that worked for [00:23:00] us, you know, are already out of date.

So w- we’re not claiming to have this evergreen, you know, model template, “Do this.” It’s more about that sort of ... And, and, you know, maybe you could see it framed as more of a business book. Um, you know, you are the CEO of your, of your illness, and you, um, put together your team, and you make sure everybody on your team knows their responsibilities, and you, you know, here are the questions to ask, and here are the places to look, and here are the ways to evaluate whether this guru or this guru is, is right or wrong.

Um, I feel like we can offer those kinds of tools. Um, but I think ultimately it’s, our credibility is our story, that we went through it, and here are the things we saw. And, um- You know, ultimately that’s the kind of writer I am anyway. That’s, that is the kind of book that I write, is telling stories and setting the, the scene and the details.

I’m, I’m not ever gonna write a book that’s just gonna be like, you know, fact, fact, fact, fact. Yeah. So I guess, I don’t know if I answered your question.

Jennie Nash: Well, [00:24:00] that, what’s really interesting about that approach, I’m trying, I’m searching right now for, for a book that, um, I can’t remember the title. Uh, it, it’s a book- I

 Brenna Humphries: wanna read that back pain book by the way.

My dad’s-

Jennie Nash: Oh, that back pain book? ... going through that right now. Yeah.

 Brenna Humphries: Is

Jennie Nash: riveting. And what was weird for me, a little aside about me, um, my friend’s going through a terrible back pain thing and, and she said, “I read this book and, and, um, he, he mentions migraines.” So I’m a long-term sufferer of migraine, and she’s like- Mm-hmm

“I, you know, I’d love to talk to you about it.” And I say, “Yeah, I’m all over it.” And then the same week, a business mentor of mine mentioned the same book, and it was published in the ‘90s. And I was like, “Okay- Whoa ... I’m paying attention, universe.” Yes. Right? Yeah. And she mentioned- Yeah ... it from a business standpoint because it’s a book about basically questioning your own thoughts, right?

So- Oh, wow ... it’s fantastic. But- Okay ... the book I’m trying to find that I’m not c- turning up is, it was for [00:25:00] college, college kids, and it was- Be the CEO of your life, but that’s not coming up right, so it’s, it’s not that. But what’s interesting about taking approach, an approach like that for you and your husband, so from where I sit, all of a sudden when you say that, I get all, um, sparkly.

Sparkles? Be- sparkly. I’m like, ooh. Because you guys run a business together. We do. You’ve run a business for 14 years together. Yeah. You, you know how to have a business partnership. You know how to divide and conquer. You know what strengths and weaknesses. You know how to communicate with each other at a level that a lot of people don’t, and it plays into directly the strengths that you have.

And then when you think about marketing, going out with a book like that, with that sort of angle and that kind of stance, totally positions you as such subject matter experts, basically. Right? So-

 Brenna Humphries: Interesting. [00:26:00] Yeah ...

Jennie Nash: to me, that starts, there starts being this alignment between who you are, what you bring to this, what you want to do, what you want to say, and how you’re gonna be in the world with the topic.

Because how you want to be in the world with the topic is you want to be speaking to, you know, caregiver groups and doctor groups and nursing groups, and all the people that touch, um, prostate cancer patients and their, and their partners at the beginning of the journey, and take them through this process that’s gonna help them do a better job at confronting- Mm

this thing. That’s a fantastic approach, and-

 Brenna Humphries: Okay ...

Jennie Nash: one that then mitigates all the problems we’ve talked about, as long as you, you know, watch your language where it’s, it’s not like, “This is what you should do.” It’s... Or maybe it’s the this is what you should do could be more, um, mm, what’s the word I’m looking [00:27:00] for?

Not prescriptive, but more global. Like, you’re allowed to say something like, “You don’t have to do what the doctor says.” Like, as a global thing. Mm-hmm. That’s different from saying, “You don’t have to get this MRI,”

 Brenna Humphries: right? Like-

Jennie Nash: Like, so if you- Yeah ... kinda take it up a notch, a bigger picture thing, and when you talk about it, you’re the CEO of, you know...

So, like, when I went through cancer, which feels just like a gazillion years ago, we actually saw this artifact not so long ago when we were packing up some books. We had this binder. I feel like it was before the internet. Is that even possible? Have I been alive that long? I don’t know. Uh, we’ve s- it didn’t feel like it was internet times, but we had this literal five-ring- Mm-hmm

or three-ring binder, and had tabs in it, and y- you know, we were stumbling our way through. [00:28:00] But if somebody had, at that moment, said, “Listen,” “you need to go get yourself three binders. You need to make these tabs. You need to f- you know, c- find somebody in your network who can do X. Find somebody who can do I.”

We had two little kids, so it’s like, “You need to, you know, get somebody to take care of those kids. You need to...” Like, the h- uh, it... I would’ve been like, “Oh, thank you.” Right?

 Brenna Humphries: Okay, interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Jennie Nash: So, and

 Brenna Humphries: then- Yeah, ‘cause you’re lost. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s just so scary. Y- I don’t care, you know, whether you think you’re gonna die from it or not, it’s still scary.

There’s something in your body that you don’t want there, you know?

Jennie Nash: Yeah.

 Brenna Humphries: And so having somebody kind of take you by the hand and go, “Hey, you know, i- it’s gonna be okay. Here are the things you need to do, you know? And yeah, y- you’re right, don’t necessarily tell the doctor to do this process or this process, but here are the questions you should ask, and here’s- Yes

the type of relationship.” It is, like, about a little shift in the relationship with the doctor. It’s not, “Oh my God, Doc, tell [00:29:00] me what to do.” It’s, “Hey, Doctor, I... You know, here’s what I understand of, of so far. I got my report. I read my report. Here are my questions. You think I should do this procedure? Okay, got it.

Um, what would that mean in the long term for my sex life, for my anatomy, for my ability to keep doing- Yeah ... the things I love in my life?” You know, and then it’s a decision. It’s a trade-off. Are you willing to give up this thing for this thing, right? And-

Jennie Nash: So that... Yeah, that kind of a stance feels, to me, qualitatively different from what you have, and also actually more helpful.

If you’re gonna- Mm-hmm ... teach me, the reader- How to think about my relationship with the doctor. So what we’re actually talking about is slowing it way down, slowing it way down from what you have. Because-

 Brenna Humphries: Okay ...

Jennie Nash: I could see you doing a whole chapter on, so you- you guys don’t tell your family, you decide not to tell your family for some period of time, and it was hard for me to decipher that [00:30:00] period of time, but it certainly included Thanksgiving with all the people at your house.

So-

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah ...

Jennie Nash: just, you could have a whole chapter on should you tell people right away? You know, I wanted to do this, my husband wanted to do that, or we were totally in alignment, but what if you’re not? Or, um, you know, what if you have this type of relationship. You know, like, h- exactly your point, what to think about, about thinking about talk- telling your family, and doing it as a couple.

So helpful. And then, I mean, I even just the idea of if you don’t like your doctor, get another one.

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah. Right? That is an option.

Jennie Nash: Right? Because oftentimes- Yeah ... when you’re in the midst of that sort of thing, you’re not thinking like that. So when I say slow it down, it, you know, you could see I was poking a little bit in your, or your pages.

You did a l- a little bit of that, um, telling, not showing. Mm. I wanted to see [00:31:00] you saying, “What are you doing? We need to schedule that surgery tomorrow. What do you mean you didn’t call the doctor?” Like, was there a fight? Was there a anger? Did you freak out? Did you, um, go to, you know, your girlfriends and say, “My husband’s making me insane”?

Or, or was that... You know, like slowing it down to, um- the, the things people are gonna actually experience. Does that- I like that and I- How does that land?

 Brenna Humphries: It lands well, and I, you know, the, the word that you said, should, really hit me hard because what I kind of like in what you’re suggesting is that it’s not should you tell your family, it’s how do you decide when and whether to tell your family.

Yeah. And how you work that out as a couple, because in our particular case, I wanted to tell people. He was, “No. I don’t want to tell anyone until I know what our path is, ‘cause then I can answer questions and be certain.” And for me, it was very much like what you described, like, I wanna be able to talk to people [00:32:00] so that I can work this through myself.

But I think that’s the little bit of a male/female thing, or, you know, just how different people, um, respond in a situation like that, and neither one’s wrong, and neither one’s right. Right. But you have to navigate it as a couple or you’re gonna be further apart instead of, you know, our goal for this is by the end, you have your quality of life and you’re closer together for having gone through this, versus farther apart.

Jennie Nash: Well, and you, you even make a, a declaration that I think y- you got from somewhere else, but it is a little unclear, but the idea, like, this is a couples disease. And even just that, like, tell me why. And- Mm-hmm ... you know, it’s not only... Uh, ‘cause I was thinking, as a breast cancer survivor, I was thinking, well, so is that.

And I don’t know- Totally ... if you, if you got far enough in, in my book, but I, there’s a chapter about my sex life, um, and- I didn’t get

 Brenna Humphries: there, but I [00:33:00] will read quickly.

Jennie Nash: Right? Uh, having sex for the first time after having a mastectomy. Um- Mm ... and why am I telling you that? Oh, so when I, when I heard that, I was like, well, I had so many questions that I felt like, again, if you slowed it down, it’s like, is, is the prostate cancer more so a couples disease than others?

If so, why? What’s, what’s your experience of that? What’s, what’s your, um, what do people say about that? Like, so interesting, so valuable, so helpful so that two people, and I think we have to assume a partner might, might not be a woman. Uh, but if you’re writing a book about couples, it’s, there’s part- there’s partnership.

 Brenna Humphries: But- No, I think we include that either way. Yeah, it’s male, female, and it can also be transgender. If you have a prostate- Yeah ... you know you’re affected by this, and your partner or whoever you’re with. Yeah.

Jennie Nash: But so what’s interesting is when you start thinking about this, like, [00:34:00] what actually do we want to do?

What actually is this book? What is our purpose? What is our point? All these questions. Mm-hmm. Then you start to play around a lot with structure. And- Yeah ... um, I got a little tied up in knots around your structure, and there were quite a few times in the first few chapters where you said- You sort of introduced a topic and then said, “We’re gonna get to that later.”

There was a sense of like not being... Like, a reader wants to have somebody take their hand and walk them through, whatever it is. Whatever it is you’re talking about teaching, you know. So you, uh, I felt like you, there was not this path through or this narrative drive through, and when I’m talking to you now, it feels like there totally could be.

Like, I can think of so many different structural ways you could approach, approach the material, you know? So it could be [00:35:00] 12 key decisions to make with your partner.

 Brenna Humphries: Oh.

Jennie Nash: Yeah, yeah. Or it could be the first, um, I don’t know. How many hours are there in a week? Uh, s- X number of hours, um, you know- Mm-hmm ... uh, what to do in that period of time.

Or it could be, um, what does it look like to be an advocate for yourself? Here are 10 skills. Like there’s... I mean, I’m just-

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah ...

Jennie Nash: spitballing, but there’s a lot of ways if you’re clear about, okay, this is a book about- How to ask better questions, how to be an advocate for your own self, how we did that. Um, there’s so many ways you could do that.

A- and again, how does that land with you?

 Brenna Humphries: Well, what I thought of right away was, um, there was a book a while ago that I really loved the format of, um, I think it might have been a financial book n- or it might have been a, a [00:36:00] relationship book, but it was basically, here are eight date nights you need to have.

And, like, each one- Yes ... had a topic, and it had give you some questions, and, like, as a couple, you worked those out, and by the end of it, you had kind of hit all the major bases that people run into in their relationship. And I was actually thinking of modeling that a while back and creating, um, something like that for playing mixed doubles as partners.

‘Cause I thought- Amazing ... oh, that’s really cool. You know, you should think about, like, when you’re playing mixed doubles, um, ‘cause a lot of people head for divorce when they play mixed doubles. Like, it’s a thing. People will not do it. But, um, you know, you need to talk about why are we playing? Do we wanna win the championship, or do we just wanna have fun and get healthy?

And, like, why are the reason- what are the reasons we do that? What’s our approach? How are we gonna handle strategy, and what do we do if we’re losing? Or, you know, all those kinds of things. But I think that could apply really well here too. Here are the different... You know, just make this a fun process. I, I mentioned at one point we have this little ritual, like, we go to IHOP after we have a terrible day.

Jennie Nash: Okay. I love that story.

 Brenna Humphries: That [00:37:00]

Jennie Nash: was so great. It’s gonna be IHOP. And it, it reminded me of a, a friend and client of mine whose, whose husband had a, um, has a degenerative eye issue, and they often have to go to these appointments where they... Well, you know where I live. They have to drive down to LA, and it’s, like, a whole day, and they have to get up early, and they have the same thing.

They go to this taco place. And so even just taking that idea, I saw you light up when you talked about, like, eight date nights. Because now what you’re talking about is how to come together at a difficult time- Mm-hmm ... rituals that would help You know, you’re, you’re helping people design a ritual for themselves that would help.

So I could see a book that’s like, why you need this structure, what’s gonna happen over this structure. Okay, now here’s the eight, the eight dates to have. And maybe somebody has those in the first four days. Or maybe they, you know, depending on their situation, or [00:38:00] maybe they, um... But something like that allows you to be the authority of what you’re presenting rather than this sort of quasi-medical authority.

And where your husband did something specific research-wise, maybe somebody, maybe there’s two people and no- neither of them is a researcher, or n- neither of them likes to do this, but they have a friend who does. You know- Mm-hmm ... can they bring that person in? Like, what is the role of research in approaching this disease, in becoming an advocate for your own self?

Um, what, maybe it’s even what’s your relationship to research? Do you like it? Do you not like it? Are you good at it? Um, are you, you know, because what if you’re saying one of the dates is decide who’s gonna do the research, you’re not now, you’re not confronting the [00:39:00] medical establishment. You’re not, you know, it’s just somebody’s gotta understand the language that you’re now speaking.

How are you gonna do that?

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah. I, I definitely could see that. I mean, I also don’t wanna veer into the lane of we’re a couples therapist, and I’m quite aware that, you know, all couplers, all couples are different, and people are gonna have a lot of different feelings about their partner going through this.

Um, and, you know, they may not always have a supportive partner. They might, you know, there’s all kinds of situations. Um, so I like that approach, but I definitely wanna make sure too that it is getting to the, the heart. And, and maybe it’s more like a, you know, as a business, we have business meetings. We have, during the life cycle of a project, there’s the kickoff meeting, and then there’s the postmortem at the end where you go, “How’d we do?”

And then there’s status meetings along the way. Um, maybe that. I, I don’t know. I don’t want it to become a project management book either. You see my, my confusion. But I sh- definitely hear the heart of what you’re saying, which is [00:40:00] it needs to be a little bit less prescriptive In terms of the medical procedures, but still opening people’s eyes to you have a choice.

You have certain questions you need to ask, and you do need to work together on this, and you do need to think of it like a team, and you’re bringing in experts, subject matter experts who can help in the areas you, that you don’t have- Yeah ... depending on who you are- Well- ... what your strengths ...

Jennie Nash: and what’s great about this is if you adopt this type of a structure that’s, that’s more, we’re offering a framework for how to be a team through this difficult process.

That’s not being a medical advisor, and it’s not being a therapist. It’s saying, “We’re two people that work together and have a shared understanding of how to approach something like this, and this is what we did.” But the, the reason that I quite like that is takes away all the dangerous parts that, that I saw on the [00:41:00] page.

I think it makes your tone, um, it, it clarifies y- where you’re coming from. You know, not like, “Do this, do that, you must...” You know, i- it’s more, “Here’s a way to think about it. Here’s a way to approach it. Here’s, here’s what we did. Here’s how it might work. Here’s what some folks we talked to did, how they d- handled it differently,” or, “Here’s how you might approach this if you don’t have a supportive partner.”

That maybe that is a time to bring in a therapist. You know, it’s, it’s, that tone is much more, um, your authority’s coming from your lived experience, I guess.

Outro: Yeah. Okay.

Jennie Nash: But the- Mm-hmm ... the reason that I c- I quite like this for you all is because from a marketing perspective, you were talking about the possibility of partnerships, um, you know, retreats, having, uh, things, inviting people in to go through this work together.

The way [00:42:00] that I always like to talk to nonfiction auf- authors is to think about how this book is gonna live in the world. And if you had something like eight dates, uh, or eight conversations, or eight def- decisions, or whatever that structure might be, you could see how that would lend itself so beautifully to, “Here’s a three-day weekend for the newly diagnosed.”

You know, if you’ve, if you’ve been diagnosed, um, in the last X months or, you know, maybe I’m gonna talk about where you meet that, where you meet that reader in terms of their timeline. But you could run virtual events. You could run... You could have a program that is on demand. Um, there’s a woman in my business mastermind.

Well, she isn’t there anymore, but she ran, um, she had a very successful business. Ah, she had such a great name. It was called, um- Don’t text your [00:43:00] ex. It was so great,

 Brenna Humphries: right? That is good advice for anyone.

Jennie Nash: And it was, um, how to get over a breakup in three months. So she had this guarantee that you can get over a breakup in three months, and she had this process that she used.

I, I never quite understood what it was. I wish I had actually gone and taken it, ‘cause I was always so curious. What, what are you doing that you could guarantee that? But, but she’d done it so many times with so many people that she could guarantee that. I think it was get over your ex in three months or your money back.

But she had a always on demand, um, you know, thing, because her ideal client, her ideal reader needs something right now, right? They need something tonight.

 Brenna Humphries: Yes. Well, that, that

Jennie Nash: relays. Right?

 Brenna Humphries: And

Jennie Nash: there’s also, if you think about, like, um, somebody else in my business mastermind had a thing where it was get your toddler to sleep tonight.

Oh, wow. Because it’s like [00:44:00] somebody needs that right now. Mm-hmm. They don’t need that three weeks from now. So from a, from a business ecosystem standpoint, if you had a book like that, that would lend itself to a training, there could be an on-demand training. You could run retreats. You could do in-person things.

You could go and teach others in the medical profession how to use this book. You know, there’s so many ways that you could be then in the, living with this in the world. Does, does that resonate?

 Brenna Humphries: It does, yeah. And, and you touch on something that I think I mentioned towards the end of the, um, not the proposal, but in your worksheet, which is, I mean, yes, it’s a couples disease for certain very specific reasons.

It does deal very much with intimacy. Um, but there’s no reason that this particular process could not be applied to breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, other issues that couples have to walk through together. There’s always an element of, [00:45:00] “I can’t, you know, really understand what’s going through, what’s going on with you as the, the patient,” right?

There’s certain things that you’re feeling and experiencing that I can be empathetic about, but I can’t really, you know, go there with you. Yeah. And I think with a lot of diseases, that is true. And so I could see it expanding into more of, again, a, a process you can follow with regard to your relationship, and also with regard to getting through the medical system.

‘Cause again, I, I don’t think it’s the doctors, but I do think we have a difficult system in place here with insurance and, you know, the time I spent on the phone calling doctor’s offices and getting authorizations and all that stuff. It really is like a business in that sense too. So I think that’s true of any, any illness, and so it could be a little bigger- Mm-hmm

than just prostate cancer in that way.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. Um, and if you position it as- Well, again, coming from your lived experience of we run a [00:46:00] business- Mm-hmm ... this is CEO of your disease, the CEO of your diagnosis, CEO of your, you know, medical journey, and we’re uniquely qualified to teach this because we run a business together.

We, we already knew how to do this, and we leapt into action quickly, and that is what saved us and, you know, helped us move through this process so well, and we wanna share our, our process, our methodology, how we, how we did that with you. That’s, I think, way more sellable for you in the marketplace. Um, so If you are, after we’re having this conversation, do you feel like you want to shake things up in the proposal?

Um, oh,

 Brenna Humphries: yeah

Jennie Nash: Because there’s two pathways forward. It’d be like, well, we can tweak a few things and clean it up, and then it’s ready to go, or it’s, yeah, I think we gotta strip it back to the studs [00:47:00] and build it up again. Like, what, what are you feeling? Which path are you feeling?

 Brenna Humphries: Well, I mean, the proposal itself, um, I am completely fine with completely stripping.

Um, and the chapters as well, but I do feel like there’s a lot in the chapters, in the actual writing, that I am quite fond of and would like to keep in terms of telling our story. Um, but I guess I might put that back on you in terms of if we were to restructure this to be a little bit more like, “Hey, cancer sucks.

How about you start a business instead? Pick a name, you know, get your LLC, get... And, and help walk people through how you build a business,” and, um, but applying that to dealing with a cancer diagnosis and a relationship. Um, how... In other words, how much of our personal story would you see remaining in something like that?

And like, how [00:48:00] could you envision something like that being still a personal story and helpful to people who are terrified, but also creating this process? Is that-

Jennie Nash: Well, you get to decide. Um-

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah ...

Jennie Nash: there, you could do it in any number of ways. Um, I mean, it sounds like it’s very important to you to keep it, so, um, that would be the answer, right?

It’s not, it’s not what I think- Mm-hmm ... it would be, we, we wanna share that. We think it’s important. Um, you could write a book without it easily. Could be very CEO kind of vibe, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, workbook-y, you know. Um, if you decide that you want to make your story a part of it, then you have to, then the next decision is, okay, how?

Um, i- I thought when I first started reading your book, there was a moment, um, you were talking about we, and then there [00:49:00] was a moment when you s- used the I, and I realized that you’re the narrati- you’re the narrator. And before that, I thought, “Oh, are they gonna do a, a he said, she said, or a, you know, his and hers, or my, my view, y- you know, their view?”

Um, I thought that’s what you were gonna do, um, a- and then you didn’t, so you could do that. Um, you could remain where you’re the narrator and telling, um- You know, reporting on the story basically. Um, I agree that there’s parts of your chapters that are, that are lovely. Some of ... When you write scenes, you’re really good, when you actually write a scene, um, because you’re putting us in it, we’re there, uh, it’s present moment, you’re showing us what you’re thinking and feeling and making, how you’re making meaning of things.

Um, but when you’re just telling us what happened, not so much. Um, [00:50:00] that wasn’t so engaging. So I would definitely go through and keep the, the parts that you love are probably the parts that are effective, right? So, um, I don’t think you have to ax it. But it ... So we’re talking about two things. We’re talking about figuring out a, the larger overall structure that’s gonna serve you and, and allow you to be the authority over this story and, and have it be commercially viable.

And then we’re talking about- W- how each chapter’s gonna deliver on that. Um, and if it’s, if you’re gonna do something like eight dates or eight decisions or eight questions, you would have a kind of a template for how each chapter would be. It’s gonna be, well, we’re gonna tell our story and what we did.

We’re gonna talk about why this is one of the eight things. We’re gonna, um, talk about what, you know, has to happen, uh, w- in this context of this question or decision or [00:51:00] date. Um, and it’s always gonna end with a series of questions. So, you know, your story would be in the mix. Um, so the, that’s the, that would be the two structural decisions.

How’s the big thing gonna work, and then how is each chapter gonna work within it to, to serve you? Um, and something I do wanna say is even though this is big revision work, when you, when I look at your proposal, your audience analysis is great. Your comp titles are perfect. They’re just, they’re just confused because you’re confused about the book you’re writing.

But those aren’t gonna change. Mm-hmm. The, how you talk about them will change a little bit. Um, you know, your, your bios are largely intact. I think you could use that section better. Um, I’m just trying to think through the whole, the whole thing. Um, you know, so in some ways it’s, it’s not wholesale scrapping of it at all.

[00:52:00] It’s, okay, we gotta lay a stronger foundation.

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah. That makes sense. Ah, that’s a lot of decisions.

Jennie Nash: It is. But it’s- But guess- But

 Brenna Humphries: it’s good. I mean, I’m excited ...

Jennie Nash: guess what I know about you and your husband? You’re good at making decisions together.

 Brenna Humphries: We’ve made a few. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m lucky.

Jennie Nash: Um- Yeah ... so I wanna make sure that I leave you with clarity about what you’re, what the big decisions are.

Do you wanna reflect back to me what, what you think you’re gonna be doing?

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah. Well, I, I think, um, making sure that I keep going back to what the, you know, goal of the writing the book is, but maybe finding a way to, um, speak from a place of personal ... What did you say? Personal authority? Um, lived experience.

Yeah, your lived experience. Authority through lived experience. Yeah. So I know what we’ve done. [00:53:00] I know what we know. I know what we can speak to with authority. Um, I guess maybe, well-

Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways to change someone’s mind about an approach, and, and asking questions can be a very strong approach versus being prescriptive. So I think that that’s, that’s a really interesting way to go about it, is say, “Here are some questions, and here’s a process.

Um, and maybe we ... I’ll have to push on it, whether it’s, you know, how you form a business,” but I think there are a lot of elements that work in terms of choosing your team and making sure that you’re, you know ... And I think things are less scary when you have a process to follow, so creating something like that would be good.

Um, but yeah, I guess I’m not quite seeing the, the chapter format yet in my mind. Um, but I think I hear what you’re saying in terms of what needs to change, yeah.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. And you can noodle on that. [00:54:00] Um, you know, maybe, maybe it is that, that date structure or that decision structure, or maybe it’s by time. You know, maybe it’s the first 24 hours, or maybe it’s the- Mm

um, you know. And one, one thing that I would suggest to, like be really open and curious about what it could look like, and fish around for a structure. The thing that’s great about structure is you can steal it, so fish around for a structure that you like. You know, you mentioned that this book about, um, relationships that you like.

It doesn’t have to be in your realm. This isn’t a comp title. Um, one book that has come to my mind while I’ve been thinking about yours is, um ... Are you familiar with the work of Emily Nagoski? Um-

 Brenna Humphries: I’m sorry. You cut out just a little bit there. What’s the name?

Jennie Nash: Oh, Emily Nagoski.

 Brenna Humphries: Oh, Emily Nagoski. No.

Jennie Nash: So she’s a sex researcher and, um, or therapist, a sex therapist, [00:55:00] and she’s written several books.

The first one’s called Come Again, but the second one is called Come Together: The Science and Art of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections, and it’s, um, a beautiful book about how to talk to your partner about sex as you age.

 Brenna Humphries: Wow.

Jennie Nash: And, um, just the way she does it, the way she approaches that book, you know, look at the table of contents of a book like that.

Um, she’s coming at it, she’s got a PhD, she’s coming from a therapy standpoint, so she’s got a different lived experience that she gets to share. Yeah. But, um, you know, look for books that, that are, that have a structure that gets at what you’re trying to do, which is teach how to be a, in partnership through a hard medical process.

 Brenna Humphries: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it’s ... You say that and I [00:56:00] go, “Oh, but I’m not a therapist. I’m not, you know, qualified in that way,” but, um, I think there’s a way around that, yeah, to talk again about the process versus the, the knowledge. Um, but I will, yeah. We, there are several books that we looked at in considering our structure, and we were looking at Outlive by Peter Attia.

We were looking at, um- Yep ... Sanjay Gupta’s book, and- Yep ... the Let Them theory, which all have their own controversies at this point. But in terms- Right ... of structure, you know, um, there was good storytelling in a lot of those, a lot of the personal reasons for why they’re writing it, but then also the, the actual advice, so, um.

Jennie Nash: Right. Right. Um, yeah. I think, um, just backing away from you can’t give people medical advice, um, and, and the through line of where do we wanna take them, how do we wanna take them, you guys have so much to offer, and it’s an exciting opportunity. And if you look at the comp titles, there’s such a opportunity to do [00:57:00] something great here, and I would really hold on, this will be my final thought- Mm-hmm

to it’s unusual to have a couple that works together in the particular way that you all do in a partnership, in a creative business. Um, there’s things that you know and do that you probably don’t know that you know and do that would really help other people that don’t work with their spouse or that haven’t tackled, uh

You know, you said, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to write a project management book.” I heard you s- sort of say that, but, um, you know, there’s a lot of people that have no idea how to begin to approach something like this together. You know, you hear ... We just did a big, um, house renovation, and, you know, people say all the time, “Oh, people get divorced over that.”

You know, that’s the level most people know how to deal with, is wh- you know, how are we choosing paint color. You’re talking about something much more charged- Mm ... emotionally. So, you know, you’ve got something really big [00:58:00] to share, and the heart to share it, and it’s very cool, and I can’t wait to see what you do next.

 Brenna Humphries: Thank you. This is so helpful. I can’t even tell you. I’m very grateful. Thank you for this.

Jennie Nash: Well, thank you for being in the hot seat- And for our listeners, thanks for listening. Now let’s get back to work.

Outro: The hashtag amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:59:00] work.

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Hill describes confronting this while rebranding her website and shifting from listing credentials to articulating the real user experience and who the work is and isn’t for, using specific language that reflects her core value of awareness/attunement rather than generic, AI-like claims.

They unpack the psychology behind proving (seeking safety, belonging, and autonomy) and suggest asking which need is driving the behavior, aiming instead to demonstrate value, embrace vulnerability, and rely on trusted “tough love” feedback.

Books Mentioned

• Wise Effort by Dr. Diana Hill

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Learn All About the Summer Challenge

On July 6th at 9:00 am PST, Jennie will be hosting a live AMA to talk about the Blueprint and the summer challenge, and answer all your questions. We’ll send out an email reminder about this event.

Transcript

Jennie Nash: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most.

Hey, everyone. This is Margin Notes, the part of the podcast where we’re talking about big decisions writers face in their work and their creative lives.

And I’m here today again with Dr. Diana Hill, author of Wise Effort, and I am recording this while sitting on the floor of my grandchild’s nursery. I’ve got my microphone on a box of diapers, and I’m making it work ‘cause that’s what we do. We just make it work. And today, Diana and I wanna talk about this idea of feeling like you need to prove yourself and how that undermines everything, your power and your point.[00:01:00]

And the reason that we wanted to talk about this is, well, it was triggered by something that Diana was going through, but I... resonated so much with me as well. I feel like this happens to me all the time, feeling like I need to prove myself, and I see it happening in my clients all the time, particularly when they’re trying to pin their idea down, or they’re trying to work on a book proposal.

They’re trying to pitch themselves to something in some way. This idea of having to just prove ourselves, puff ourselves up, um, look at all our accomplishments, all, all of those things. So Diana, do you wanna talk about what happened to you that, that triggered this idea of this conversation?

Dr. Diana Hill: Well, I’m working on the...

A website rebrand, which I think we all do now. It’s sort of like we have to update our kitchens every 10 years and our websites every five, right? So- Five years? ... I’m updating... Three. Two? How many years do you update your website? How often?

Jennie Nash: Like every couple months.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, but I’m doing [00:02:00] a full rebrand. Like I’m not just repainting.

I’m actually like, you know, doing a little remodel as well. So I’m going through that, the remodel process, and who I was five years ago is very different than who I am now. I’ve evolved as an author. I’ve had a num- number of books come out, and I’ve done the, the adding on little bits, so my website has been updated to include the books that I’ve been, that I’ve...

But I’ve changed, and the question became in this, in putting out the, the rebrand is who, who am I gonna put out into the world? And there was this conflict happening where I kept on wanting to prove my academic achievements, prove that I have, that I’m worthy in some way for you to listen to me, and you were helping me on it, and you’re like, “No, this is- that’s actually de- it detracts from actually what you’re gonna guide people to get.”

Like, what is, what is the offer? What are people gonna experience in, in reading your books or [00:03:00] working with you? And those are two very different presentations. One is the prove yourself presentation, and then one is actually what am I here for presentation, and you have to dig deeper into the what am I here for one

Jennie Nash: That’s a great way of putting it.

Yeah, and what I was seeing you do, I just recognize so often it’s almost just like, “Here’s my resume. Let me give you my resume.” Yeah And the accolades, and the honors, and people I’ve worked with, and the stages I’ve been on. And we think that that shorthand is going to convey to people what it’s like to, to work with us, or to read our work, or to be immersed in our ideas or our thoughts, and it...

Nobody cares really, right? Like, at the end of the day, in a weird way, it, nobody cares.

Dr. Diana Hill: The funny thing about our resume is that we all have things on our resume that we are really proud of because for some reason it was super impressive to us in our little niche thing at that particular time. That [00:04:00] you, when you actually put it out there, like you said, nobody cares.

It’s not that impressive a- outside of the context of your personal experience. So keep your resume to yourself.

Jennie Nash: You know?

Dr. Diana Hill: Re- it’s a great, great reminder of all the things that you’ve accomplished, and been through, and the struggles that you’ve had, but the questioning, but the question for me is, okay, what is the user experience in, in coming to this work?

And is the user experience one that is a- actually the experience that they’re gonna have with me when they work with me, or when they read my book, or when they... And that’s, that needs to be true. My resume actually is an, is an, a match for that, um, for that user experience.

Jennie Nash: It’s so funny ‘cause while you’re talking about keep your resume for yourself, I’m remembering some times quite recently actually where I’ve had a big thing happen, and I’ve said to my family, actually to the daughter whose house I’m in right now, well, my grandchild’s mother, um, I said to her, “Oh, this really cool thing happened.”

And then I found myself having to explain [00:05:00] it because she doesn’t understand my world, or the people, or what it means, or this other thing. And the more I started explaining it, just the s- the kinda sillier it felt. And I just sort of felt so diminished by trying to explain it to her. Like, “This matters.

Let me tell you why it matters. Let me explain what it means,” and all the things. And she was just sort of looking at me like, “Okay, Mom.” Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Dr. Diana Hill: And

Jennie Nash: that’s a little bit what it feels like to try to prove yourself when- It... Yes ... paper, right?

Dr. Diana Hill: Yes. It’s like the difference between a optometrist and ophthalmologist.

You really don’t know the difference between optometrist and ophthalmologist until you have eye issues and you realize, oh, my gosh, one of them went to medical school and has a million years more expe- experience versus the other one that can just, you know, get your glass- glasses prescription for you.

The resume matters in some ways. Your resume does matter, what you’ve done, the experiences and training, and things that, um, certifications and all those things. They do, they do matter i- in some ways. But there’s also a way that [00:06:00] you can just demonstrate it rather than having to prove it. And, and the proving yourself ends up not looking so great, and the demonstrating it- Feels better because then people are act- that’s going back to people are experiencing it.

So if you’re having a conversation with a ophthalmologist versus optometrist, the optometrist has the medical degree, the ophthalmologist doesn’t, or maybe it’s the other way around. You will actually feel a- you’ll feel that difference in having a conversation with them about eyes, right, in terms of their training and background.

The same can be true for your writing or whatever it is that you’re trying to prove.

Jennie Nash: It’s almost like we’re talking about show, don’t tell- Yeah ... except with our online identities or our professional identities, how we’re putting ourself forward, that you can’t just tell somebody, “This is how great I am.

This is all the great stuff I’ve done,” or, “This is how great it would be to, to read my work or work with me.” You, you have [00:07:00] to show. You have to own it. You have to embody it. Uh, so when you, you actually completely scrapped a version of your website that was, um... And I feel like this was a little bit my fault, and I’m sorry.

‘Cause I was like, “I hate this. Get rid of it.” Um, and you’re very coachable in that way because you understand that that’s holding a mirror up, and you were like, “Yeah, I don’t like it one bit.” And you, so you did that thing that’s very brave, which is you just said, “Okay, it’s... I’m putting it aside. I’m starting fresh.”

And, um- What... And then you loved the result. So can you talk about the different feeling of the one versus the other? What, what did it feel like to sit with the one you didn’t like? And then what did it feel like to sit with the one that you loved?

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah. So just to give listeners behind the scenes, what I’m working on is, some people call it a wire frame, which is the background of what you’re gonna say, the copy that you’re, that’s eventually gonna go on the website [00:08:00] with all the photos and the, you know, uh, design aspects of things, which I’m also working on in parallel to make sure it’s a show, don’t tell situation.

Uh, but I think what I, what I had before was i- i- it, it had those resume qualities of trying to tell you about every single school that I’d been to and, um, every thing that I’ve done that’s, that’s impressive, and also a bit about my method as opposed to what it is now is really speaking directly to the person that’s coming and what they, the struggle that they’re in, and the experience that they’re gonna have with me.

But it’s very, very specific in the, in the wording. It’s not these sort of... And this is where AI can sometimes throw us, um, sideways, is that AI can have these sort of words that applies. You, you had some comments [00:09:00] in there where you’re like, “This could apply to anybody. Isn’t that what everyone would say?”

Uh, so for example, in, in, in the wording now, there, I had done, I had done all these, like what are my core values, which people list on their website a lot. And a, a bunch of the core values that were on there, you were like, “Doesn’t everybody have... Isn’t that everyone’s core...” Like, if you have a core value of kindness, who doesn’t have cor- k- kindness as a core value, right?

And so I, you know, I, I have other words that are more... You said, “The one thing that really actually is you, Diana, is this word awareness, attunement to what is happening inside, around, and between us.” That’s a very, that’s a very Diana word, awareness, attunement, and this type of attunement that’s inside and around, in between, and that’s nothing that AI would generate.

So not that AI is all bad. We can use AI to help us kind of fine-tune things, but there is a element of going inside and asking yourself, like, actually wh- What is true for you? Not what are you trying to prove, but actually what is true for you and what will be the true experience [00:10:00] of the people that, that work with you, whether...

or read your work that matches that.

Jennie Nash: This connects to what I see a lot of writers do when their books come out and they start posting on social media, “Pre-order my book.” It’s usually at the pre-order stage, right? “Pre-order my book. Pre-order my book. Please pre-order my book.” And, and it’s this- Mm ... sort of, um, uh, grabby, uh, way of talking about them and what they’ve done.

And sometimes they’ll say something like, “I’ve been working on this for 10 years.” You know, like, like we care. We don’t care, in a way.

Dr. Diana Hill: Right.

Jennie Nash: What, what we need to talk about in those circumstances is w- who is this book for? What is the experience of this book going to be? What is your experience of this writer or this, if it’s a nonfiction writer like you, of this idea or these experiences they’re creating?

What is that gonna be for the reader? To, to talking, to owning it, rather than saying, “Well, I [00:11:00] worked on it for 10 years, so you have to buy my book.” You know? Like, it’s kinda crazy. So can we... Can you help us understand what’s going on psychologically when, when we’re doing that, trying to prove ourselves?

Dr. Diana Hill: Well, yeah. The, the psychology of proving ourselves. So in general, there’s three, there’s three main things that we’re, uh, sort of always trying to protect or always trying to, uh, maintain. We’re trying to maintain our safety, and these are evolutionarily, like, old reasons. We’re trying to maintain our, like, our physical safety.

Am I safe in this world, right? We’re trying to maintain our belonging and our connection, which is related to our safety, but our belong conne- connection. Am I part of the group? And then we’re trying to maintain our autonomy. Do I have control? Or somebody else taking control from me. And so what the psychology of proving ourself is that it’s sort of tackling or t- attempting to tackle those three things, but actually doesn’t get you [00:12:00] those three things.

So when we’re trying to prove ourself, we’re creating this sense of belonging because if I, if I prove to you that I’m worthy, then you’ll accept me, right? But actually, when you’re trying to prove yourself, it doesn’t look good to people. They, they, they’re off- off-put. It, it doesn’t feel authentic, it feels provey, right?

You’re just listing all your accomplishments. We also, when we’re trying to prove ourself, we’re trying to maintain that safety in the sense that, if I prove myself, you can’t hurt me. You can’t... You know, your critiques won’t, won’t damage me. But that, that’s also not true as well. We actually will, um, because we’re...

Sort of a weird thing, but if you’re trying to prove yourself and people accept you just by trying to prove yourself, then, then you also can feel like they’re not really accepting all of you, they’re not accepting the messy parts of you. And we actually feel a little bit safer when we show people our vulnerable, messy parts and people still like us, they still find us beautiful with the mess and the flaws, right?[00:13:00]

And then the third part around, so we have safety, we have, um, belonging, and then the third aspect of maintaining autonomy and control. This is also, um, a bit of a paradox because the more that you’re trying to prove yourself, actually the less autonomy you have because you are now in the confines of, I can only present this, this, and this as the trying to gain approval, and I have less, um, variability or less ability to be diverse in my, in my presentation.

So the, it actually narrows us, but there’s evolutionary reasons why we do it, and it’s all about trying to, you know, our own survival in some ways.

Jennie Nash: Oh, that is so interesting. That puts a whole different spin on... ‘Cause I always wonder, why is that people’s instinct to, um, yeah, they wanna be... I mean, it’s what all writers want in a way, right?

We wanna be loved, we wanna be chosen, we [00:14:00] wanna be, um, embraced by our readers and by our fans. We wanna have fans. Um, what an interesting way to think about that.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah. We also wanna be in control, ‘cause it’s scary to let, let go of a little bit of that control or to, like, like you were talking about- Actually, instead of talking about, you know, s- pre-order my book, and you actually start saying, “This is, this is the, this is why this book may be helpful for you,” you’re opening yourself up to more rejection because what if someone doesn’t find it helpful, right?

Or doesn’t- Or says- Their, their experience ... you don’t know

Jennie Nash: what you’re talking about.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, and that’s what I really liked. So when you were coaching me on my, on, um, the wire frame of my, the website or the, the branding, you coached me on these two lines. This work is right for you if... And entering in all the reasons, like who, who is it that you’re, th- is a good match?

And this work may not be for you if... [00:15:00] Which is so dangerous to say, right? So it may not be for you if you’re looking for something quick, polished and comfortable. This isn’t that. And so you actually are gonna turn away a few people. That, and in some ways you kind of are proving yourself, but not in a direct way, by saying, “I can own this space and tell you this is who, who it’s gonna work for, this is who it’s not gonna work for, and I don’t need it to work for all of you.”

So it ha- it has a little bit of actually more proof to it, but it’s also a little bit more vulnerable.

Jennie Nash: That’s so cool. So for a fiction writer, they might think to themselves, “I wrote this particular kind of book.” Uh, well, let’s just take a happily ever after romance. I wrote a happily ever after romance for people who love this type of thing and this type of character and this type of situation.

You know, maybe it’s friends to lovers or whatever, and, and it’s not for people who are looking for this other thing. Like to-

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, if you’re looking for bullet points on how to be a better romantic partner and some self-help, this [00:16:00] book is not it. You know? Like, but it, it is this, you’re gonna get this experience or this journey or the, these, um, the gosh, when you’re, like, on the beach reading this book, you’re not gonna wanna put it down ‘cause you’re so engrossed in it versus the types of book, the s- books that I write, which are much more actionable, bullet-pointy, and, you know, you’ll be able to put it down.

You’ll be able to put my books down for a little bit, take a break. So it’s- You have

Jennie Nash: to. Let your brain, yeah. You have to. Let your brain process.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah.

Jennie Nash: So what can people do if they feel themselves in that I have to prove it energy? What’s a way to, to get out of it, um, short of having, um, your book coach tell you

Dr. Diana Hill: that- Yeah

they hate it? Okay, so here’s the bullet points. This is, this is the, the, the bullet point thing. First ask yourself, am I, am I trying to seek safety? Am I trying to experience a sense of autonomy? Am, um, or am I [00:17:00] trying to experience belonging? Is this about wanting to belong? Those three things. Like, am I trying to feel safe?

Am I trying... And is that what’s really driving me? And just asking yourself that can help you remember, okay, what’s, what’s driving this desire to prove myself? And when you ask yourself what’s driving this desire to prove yourself, you actually can meet those inner yearnings that are underneath that in a more authentic way

Jennie Nash: I love that.

I love that Yeah And, and then maybe then own, own your work, um, in a way that’s, I don’t know what the word would be, well, more authentic, but, um, probably just feels better. ‘Cause isn’t that where you landed? Where you j- you s- there was such a sense of relief when you landed on the right way of presenting yourself.

Just it was like, “Ah, yes. This is- Yeah ... where I wanna be.”

Dr. Diana Hill: Well, yeah. It’s, it’s relief because it feels more congruent so that you know what you’re putting on the page was also, would also be what you’re telling [00:18:00] someone if you’re sitting next to them at dinner. It’s, it’s congruent, it matches, it, it flows, it’s more you than the proving yourself energy where it’s a lot more effort, it’s a lot more, um, contraction, it’s a lot more keeping track of things, ‘cause I have to prove X, Y, and Z, and it’s a lot less connection, ease, and flow.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. Uh, which is what happens when you’re in wise effort. That’s what your book is about. So that, that was a neat way to bring it around to your, your, uh, your core thing. I think it’s worth pointing out that even someone like you, who is a world-class expert in these ideas and how to, how to be in wise effort, even you struggle with falling into these traps of proving yourself.

And I certainly do every day. Um, so I think it’s just worth noting that nobody, nobody escapes this.

Dr. Diana Hill: [00:19:00] Nobody escapes being a human. Of course not. So these are our human, these are our human ten- tendencies.

Jennie Nash: Yeah.

Dr. Diana Hill: They’re just human tendencies. And when we can see it as that, then we can use our wiser minds to help us with our more human selves that get c- gets caught and trapped.

And, uh, and then the, the other part of it that I think is really huge for me is having people like you, Jennie, in my life that help doing this type of point, do the pointing out in the way that you do it, that is I know that you totally have my back, and so that’s why you can give me tough love. So you need some tough love people reading your work, uh, that you trust, that aren’t, aren’t gonna let it just slip through ‘cause it’s not, you know, let the prove y- but actually will point it out to you, but will point out to you in a way that feels like this, this is gonna be better because they see me and know me.

Yeah.

Jennie Nash: I love that. Well, thank you for coming on to talk about this idea. And for our listeners, until next time, [00:20:00] stop playing small and write like it matters.

Outro: The hashtag amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work

Andrew adds a new opening murder to raise the early body count without revealing the killer, links the victim to Abby, and explores Seward’s conflicted “strategy” to preserve an old-world hierarchy that targets women’s and vampires’ agency. They also discuss Quince as a privileged, unreliable brother and the need to define Mina’s telepathic vampire “magic” so her influence preserves Abby’s agency and makes Mina’s end offer a harder choice. They plan to review drafted chapters next.

Catch Up on Andrew’s Hot Seat Coaching Journey

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie, and I want to say thank you to everyone who’s been reaching out to inquire about Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification Program and the free training that I’m doing on June 15th. One of the things I’ve been hearing again and again is this feeling that helping writers often comes very naturally to certain people, sometimes long before they even think of it as professional work.

They’re the ones everybody turns to when they’re stuck. They love talking about books and structure and ideas and the creative process. They know how to listen carefully and ask thoughtful questions. And whether or not they even know it, they’re often looking for a way to build work around those strengths, and they want to find something meaningful and sustainable.

And that’s really what our certification program is designed to support. If you want to learn more and see if your background might be a good fit for this work, I’m hosting a free live webinar on June 15th, where I’ll walk through what book coaches actually do and how people begin to build a career around it.

You can register at [00:01:00] bookcoaches.com/webinar1. That’s the number one. bookcoaches.com/webinar1. Okay, now on to the episode.

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a hot seat coaching episode where we work through a real writing challenge in real time, and today I’m back with Andrew Perella, who’s become a fan favorite.

Andrew, did you know that?

Andrew: I, I was not aware.

Jennie: Everybody is hanging on their edge of their seat to see- ... what’s gonna come next with your novel. So where we left you the last time was we had the great good fortune of speaking with Sam Skoll- Mm-hmm ... uh, executive director of [00:02:00] ThrillerFest, thriller coach, and, um, she, she gave you some directives, and how did you feel coming away from that and, and then doing that work?

Andrew: Oh, I mean, it was great to, to get her insights and thoughts about that, and she w- um, you know, spelling out some of the things that the thriller audience expects from a thriller book, like the three twists, the, the, the mid-book twist, the, the, the end of the book twist, and then the final tw- And like, so I’ve been, I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and it was really fun brainstorming with her about what she was seeing in, in my outline and how, how things could, uh, could be adjusted to, to kind of f- meet some of those, some of those, uh, thriller reader expectations.

Um-

Jennie: And a lot of that hinged on getting your antagonist’s motivation pinned down, which, which you did some great work on. So before we get into it, are you sick of this yet? Like- Because it’s, it’s interesting, right? Like, you’re such a [00:03:00] good, you’re so coachable that you’re sort of just doing what we say here.

But this has been a lot of time on the outline of a novel. Are you, are you like, “I just want to write already”? Like, how are you feeling about that?

Andrew: Um, uh, full disclosure, I did start doing a little bit of writing. I- And just like- I would imagine that

Jennie: you wouldn’t.

Andrew: Started playing around with a few of those open, uh, uh, with a couple of the opening scenes.

Um, but like I kept going back to the outline to say, “Well, okay, so what am I doing next?” And like, and, and like so to a certain extent, yes, I am a little bit tired. If, if I’m be- if to be imp- in all honesty, I’m a little tired of, of the outline, but it is so valuable and like I’m appreciating n- now the value of it in very real terms as I start trying to flesh out what these scenes are going to look like and what is happening in these scenes.

I go back to here and it’s like, “Okay, these are the things, these are the things that are happening, these are the emotions that are happening, these are the [00:04:00] things my, my characters are, are thinking and feeling, uh, in these scenes,” so I need to make sure that is evident on the page. Um, and so it’s, it’s been, it’s been an invaluable, uh, an invaluable re- resource in that regard.

Jennie: Well, the reason I asked is because I find myself a little tired of it, and so I just wanted to talk about that- ... because, well, it’s interesting, right? Because writing a book takes so long, and getting it right takes so long. And for anybody who’s paying attention, so that’s you the writer, that’s me the person guiding you, there is that sense that starts to come in like, “Haven’t we been here before?”

Or, “Do we have to?” Or, “Couldn’t we just carry on?” You know, there is that, that emotion, and I think it’s a valid and real emotion, which is why I wanted to bring it up because- Mm-hmm ... the question is why bother? Right? Like why bother? Could we, [00:05:00] could we just solve all the problems in the manuscript? Um- I happen to think that’s a really inefficient way to go.

Um, so I don’t know. Uh, but I did want to be real about that because there, there are still some things that I would tighten down. And, you know, so to think of the outline as a living, breathing document in just the way that you described, it’s like I’m gonna write- Mm-hmm ... I’m gonna go back to it, I’m gonna write, I’m gonna go back to it.

It’s gonna guide me, and I’m, if I’m going to... It can be the keeper of the changes. So-

Andrew: Right ...

Jennie: let’s say that we decide today that you’re gonna do something different in a first scene that you have in fact already written. It’s like, okay, next time you go touch that scene, you’ll do what’s in this new outline.

So it be- that’s what we mean by living. Does that make sense?

Andrew: Yes. No, I think that makes absolute sense. Um, and I can, I can f- you know, as I started tinkering with some of the scenes, I [00:06:00] was like, “Oh, this is changing kind of the intent of this scene. This is, this is changing how this is going to set up the next scene,” and I’m, I, I’m realizing I need to now go back to the outline and make some adjustments t- ‘cause I like some of the changes that are happening when I started, um, blowing up the scenes a little bit, expanding the scenes a little bit.

Um, so it’s, it’s gonna be fun to work on that.

Jennie: And I think this also speaks to the reality that there’s kind of never a moment when it’s just, “This is perfect,” and you are now released from- What? Right? It’s

Andrew: like- You’re, you’re telling me this now? I

Jennie: know, right? Um, like, and that was when I was, when I was thinking, like, gosh, I bet Andrew’s just like, “When is she gonna tell me I can stop doing this?”

But this is the work, right? Right. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I just wanted to talk about that. Um, okay, so this work that you did on the outline to pin down primarily Seward, the, the antagonist, um, motivation [00:07:00] and some of the mystery part, the clue, the twisty part- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... um, so you’re liking that stuff it sounds like.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. It, um, adding some of those elements to the, to the, to the outline have made Seward a more p- a more present character for me, which is, which is really nice. I still feel like I’m tinkering with some of the clues, and like, and some, what’s gonna be a clue and what’s gonna be a red herring, and what’s, and what’s real and what’s not.

And so that is still, um, I feel like I’m still shaping. But it was good to get some of that stuff on the page and see what works, see what sticks, uh, and see what fizzles.

Jennie: Um, wow, that’s a great phrase. What works, what sticks, what fizzles. So a couple sort of global feedback, I felt the same, that the clues felt a, still a little predictable.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: A little, um, you know, the sense of Abby trying to piece it together by [00:08:00] different clues each time, or deeper, a deeper understanding of what’s happening, or her revelation around the clues does feel like you could deepen that, for sure.

Andrew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jennie: Um, so I saw that, and then the other thing I saw was I wanted to reflect back to you that I feel like what you’ve developed with Seward, he’s such a good villain.

Um, and I think it’d be easy to think of him Um, sort of generically bad. Like he doesn’t like women, he doesn’t... Like, he’s tr- he’s vindictive to, to his old, um, what was the relationship, I guess? Mentor. His old mentor, yeah. Right? You know, so he’s, he’s that, he’s... I’m just looking at my notes here. He’s, he’s got all these things that he is, and it, it would be [00:09:00] easy to think, “Well, here he is acting badly against these people.

Here he’s acting badly against these people.” But he has a worldview, and you shared with, this with me in the very beginning iteration of him, that- Mm-hmm ... he kind of believes that these hierarchies or structures of people or creatures who are better than or less than, that are, these are necessary, right?

To, to preserve or control the culture or civilization. Like, he’s got that overarching worldview that he really believes is true, right?

Andrew: Mm-hmm. Absolutely, yeah.

Jennie: So I would just suggest that when you’re, when you’re developing him and he’s in this scene, that it’s not like here’s another murder, and here’s another murder, and here’s another murder.

It’s, it’s- Yeah ... this is all for this particular end [00:10:00] that he’s passionate about. And further, Abby, um, represents c- all of these things kind of come together, all of these threads that he’s, believes come together in her, right? She’s not just the next- victim. She’s like the embodiment of what he hates, right?

Andrew: Yeah, and I think, I think he’s conflicted about that too. Because I think on some level, like he is fond of her, you know? He is an avuncular figure to him, uh, to her, and so like, and he’s known her ent- her entire life, and so I think there’s still... He, yeah, I think he’s a little conflicted like that, so like to ensure that that Seward doesn’t turn into like this mustache-twirling, um, you know-

Jennie: Right

Andrew: two-dimensional character, like I, like I want to inject that, that conflict, but also really need to like flesh out that worldview of his that defines so much about him. Um, [00:11:00] he doesn’t wanna kill people just to kill people. There is, there is a, there is a strategy in place for the old world order that he’s trying to preserve.

Jennie: Yeah, so that, you just said that better, way better than I did. That’s what I feel like is missing- Okay ... that you wanna make sure- Yeah ... to pin, pin down, that he- Mm-hmm ... yeah, he has this strategy and, and these people are necessary collateral damage, you know, they, they have to die. And this thing that you just said about his con- being conflicted over, it’s not really his niece, but it’s as close to that as you could get.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Jennie: Where in the story does it... Because he’s trying to help her at some s- stages. Well, she comes to him for help, I guess. And- She does ... and then at the end, of course, he entraps her in a terrible and frightening way. But- Mm-hmm ... where along the way does [00:12:00] he sort of turn-

Andrew: Yeah ...

Jennie: to think, “Okay, she’s actually my problem”?

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: Where does that happen?

Andrew: And I think- I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if there’s a single turning point, but I think, like, with each murder, he’s trying to scare her away. He’s trying to scare her back to, you know, her father’s house and everything that she has- To safety ... To safety, yeah. And with each murder, she, instead of taking that path, she continues on the, on the path she wants to go on.

And so, and so he plans the next murder to, you know, to advance his own scheme, but again, to try and steer her back and, and it keeps missing that second part. Um, he keeps failing to steer her away from her, where she wants to go. And I think, so he gets increasingly frustrated and frustrated with that. Um, and I think it finally kind of [00:13:00] comes out at the end, but, like, maybe, maybe we need, maybe there needs to be...

Maybe we need to see more of that earlier?

Jennie: Well, I think- Maybe we need- ... what you’re describing is actually really cool because it’s almost like they’ve... What’s the phrase? Uh, the, the wits, they’re, they’re like... What’s that phrase I’m looking for? They’re like, um, pitting each other against, uh, they’ve pitted themselves against each other with their, their wit and- Mm-hmm

and he thinks that she’s just a girl, she needs to stand down- Right ... and then she proves herself again and again to be clever and smart and strategic in putting the pieces together. So it’s almost like a, not cat and mouse, but, uh, he keeps underestimating her. She keeps rising above. Yeah. He keeps underestimating.

She keeps rising above until- Yeah ... the scene where-

Andrew: Yep ...

Jennie: even when she’s trapped by him, that still occurs. She outwits him.

Andrew: [00:14:00] Mm-hmm.

Jennie: In that, um, prison or cell scene at the asylum. And I’m sure at that moment... Well, at that moment, then he’s gone to, to do his, his, another, uh, deed here, but- Mm-hmm He probably thinks, “Well, I’ve got, I’ve got her now.”

Not, not just locked up physically, but like, “I’ve got her in her place,” basically. Yeah. Right?

Andrew: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I think there may be a threat of, of further violence against her while she’s locked up. Like, maybe getting locked up is only temporary until he gets back and finishes his plan, and then he’ll take care of her then or something like that.

And so yeah, I, um... That’s, that’s... Yeah, that’s really her, her dark, her dark moment of reflection there, yeah.

Jennie: And I could see him kind of lecturing her. Uh, you know, like, [00:15:00] “You... I tried to help you. You went too far,” that sort of thing, you know? Like, “I’m not- Right. Yeah, exactly ... I’m not a terrible person. You just- Right

got in my way.”

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jennie: But yeah, I think if you, if you think of this outline as a braid, and those two-

Andrew: Mm-hmm ...

Jennie: are, are to- twisting around each other with the increased escalation, s- a- and, and I guess the bigger, the biggest point I’m trying to make is with the clues of the mystery and the murders that he’s committing, there’s, there’s a more of a sense that they’re about the same thing, and that she is the ultimate, um, roadblock to him.

Andrew: Yes.

Jennie: I think will really help that.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Jennie: It becomes a really personal story for the two of them.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, [00:16:00] yeah.

Jennie: Right? It’s what she wants for herself, which is agency.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: First it’s independence, then it’s agency, is precisely the thing that he thinks is dangerous.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: Women shouldn’t have agency. Right. Vampires shouldn’t have agency.

Andrew: Right.

Jennie: Right? Yeah. Uh, is there anything else that shouldn’t have agency? I’m trying to think, like, uh-

Andrew: Tho- those are, those are the two big groups that are, that, that are, that are, um, that are being represented in, in this, in this story anyway.

But yeah, I think that’s ex- that’s ex- that’s exactly right. Um.

Jennie: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah So I, um, I mean, I think you really are, are close to having this all pinned down and locked down. And, um, the thing to do is exactly what you’re doing, which is, which is right forward knowing these as you encounter them, you know, what...

[00:17:00] That’s what the outline does, is like look at it and say, “What is the point of this scene?” Right? Mm-hmm. What is it trying to do? Right. Where does it sit? Where does it come from? Where does it go to? How are those locked together to, to move that forward?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Jennie: Um, so I wanna look at a couple of the notes that I wrote.

Sure. So you ca- came up with a whole new opening, which is, which is so interesting. So, so now before the book opened on the, um, funeral- Mm-hmm ... and now that’s scene- Three, or maybe it was she sneaks out of scene one actually before. But now you’ve introduced this new scene where we see the antagonist doing evil deeds in second one.

So that’s a cool opening.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: How are you liking that?

Andrew: I, uh, I’m, I’m liking that. And, and, um, and [00:18:00] Sam raised that issue, uh, in our last session that the body count wasn’t high enough, uh Right ... that the first, the first body happens far too late. There needs to be something earlier. And I think it’s also kind of, it’s, it’s become a, a, kind of a, a classic trope in the genre as well is, like, that opening scene is, okay, we see the first victim, we see the first victim fall.

So I, I, I th- you know, I sketched something out here. I sketched an idea out here. I think it still needs some, uh, some polish clearly, but I like where, where it started, and I need to kind of figure out more about it. But I, I like having that, that opening scene. We, we don’t s- I think we see the, the, the, the scene maybe through the eyes of the victim, so this wouldn’t be through, through, uh, Brianna’s eyes.

This would be through the eyes of the victim or, or, or some near third person, uh, viewing. Um, and, like, but we wouldn’t see exactly [00:19:00] who the murderer is. Um, that’s not something, um, I th- I, I, I, I intended to give away in this opening scene anyway.

Jennie: Got it. Yeah. Well, I think your first victim is perfect. She represents something-

Andrew: Yeah

Jennie: which, which is like what we’re talking about. Right. He’s not just killing people. He’s-

Andrew: Right ...

Jennie: has very specific things he’s doing here, so- Mm-hmm ... that’s awesome. And- Yeah ... the ... Can you tell me, um- Okay, so there was a question about, uh, I was asking about Van Helsing’s died, and I was saying, like, “Is this the day he dies?

Is this the next day ‘cause there’s a funeral in scene three?” So like that timing issue, so many times novelists have this question, like where to start, and even when you know, “Well, I’m gonna start with this murder,” [00:20:00] like exactly where to start, where exactly which 24 hours is this- Mm-hmm ... you know, to be really specific about it- Yeah

because he’s been waiting for this-

Andrew: He has ...

Jennie: death- Yeah ... a long time, right?

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Jennie: And the fact- Yeah ... that he’s taking action so quickly is part of what’s kind of cool, right?

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I think he’s been, he’s been, he’s been waiting for... Uh, and I, and, and I s- I still need to figure out w- in what way Van Helsing was an obstacle for him that only his death could remove.

But I think, like, once he’s, once he’s dead, okay, Seward can start putting his plan into motion. Um, although as we find out, there are still a number of quirks in his plan that didn’t quite get worked out in the, and he’s still kind of fumbling at some points. But, um, I think, uh, yeah, he was waiting for that.

And I think also, again, t- because, like, I don’t want [00:21:00] him to be a two-dimensional character, I think there was some, like, sort of respect he was waiting for, for Van Helsing to die because he didn’t want to uh, uh, something. He didn’t want to s- he didn’t, he didn’t, you know, he did, there was some vestige of respect and I think, um, in that, in the opening, in the, in the funeral scene now I have him kind of unburden on, uh, Brianna some of his feelings about, about Van Helsing and some of his regrets about their f- their feud.

Um, but I think yes. Yeah. Now the-

Jennie: Cool, and I think that in that could be the answer also to why is he walking around with this Van Helsing monogrammed watch-

Andrew: Right ...

Jennie: in these days after. You know, if he had... It sort of mirrors the respect he has for, for Abby. Like sh- Mm-hmm ... like this sort of love hate or respect but you have to go.

You know, like- Right. Yeah ... uh, [00:22:00] which is cool. Um- Yeah ... so I, I think that’s gonna be good. Um, so Abby was connected to this woman who dies now, this first victim.

Andrew: Yes.

Jennie: So was the, this victim involved in the women’s college?

Andrew: I don’t think so. At this point, you know, I think she was just kind of a friend of the family.

That’s something I need to, I need to flesh out a little bit more. But it’s, it’s someone that she visited regularly. Maybe she was a friend of, uh, her mother’s on some, on some level. I think she was active in the, the suffragette movement and the human rights movement in general because she’s, she was a bit of a thorn in Seward’s side when he, um, talking about the, uh, the rights of his patients or inmates at his, at his asylum.

Um, but yeah.

Jennie: She was probably friends of the mom.

Andrew: Yeah. I think so. I think so. [00:23:00] Um-

Jennie: Well, you know, it’s m- she might be too old, um, to be-

Andrew: I mean, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have been peers, but they might a- they might have met, yeah, they might have met in the cause, but then she probably would have told Abby about her mother being in the cause, so that, that would spoil that, that reveal that I had scheduled for later.

Jennie: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Unless there’s a reason that she didn’t want-

Andrew: Unless there’s a reason, yeah ...

Jennie: Abby to be involved or to, or yeah, wanted to keep her away from her mother

Right Maybe, maybe this woman n- knows the mother became a vampire and wants- Maybe ... to keep Abby away from her- Yeah ... mother ‘cause she’s scared of vampires and, and not trusting. That would, that would be- Hm ... a reason for her not to- Yeah ... tell a lot of stories, right?

Andrew: She knows, she knows Mina’s fate, [00:24:00] and so-

Jennie: Right

Andrew: wants to protect, again, someone choosing to protect Abby and trying to make decisions for her.

Jennie: Oh. So good. Yeah, this poor girl, right?

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Jennie: But what I like also is that that makes her a very three-dimensional character.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: It’s not just, “I’m the nice old woman who- Right ... knew your mom and brings over- Mm-hmm

Andrew: casseroles.” Yeah.

Jennie: You know? It’s... Casseroles are probably not an English thing. Pies. What do they have? I don’t know. Pies.

Andrew: Pies and tea, mincemeat, some of that.

Jennie: Right. Yeah. Um, right, it, she’s complicit, and she’s got- Mm-hmm ... secrets, and so that’s cool that everybody’s not exactly who we think they are.

Andrew: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Jennie: I think, think that’s great.

Andrew: So that’s another secret for Abby to uncover. is who is the woman that was, that, that, that she, that she thought she [00:25:00] knew

Jennie: Um, and you added a little bit about the brother, I, I believe, um, which is that he, he’s kind of spineless. We knew that. Yeah But he agrees with this kind of order of things that Seward is trying to preserve and his dad stands for.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: He’s, he’s bought into this. Uh- Yeah.

Andrew: I’m, h- honestly, I’m struggling with Quince. Like, I’m trying, I’m trying to figure out if he’s just a failed ally, if it is something malicious, if it is benign neglect. Like, I’m trying to figure out, like, what his role is. I, like, uh, ‘cause I think at one point they were close as siblings.

They’re not far apart in age. I th- I think they’re, they were close as siblings at one point, and so is this just him kind of graduating into adulthood and assuming the mantle [00:26:00] that the generation of men before him are kind of pressing on him? Is he st- is he struggling with that internally? I... Is, is, does he...

You know, I think he, I think he does love his sister. I mean, that, like, to make things complicated, like, there is a lot of love in this book, um- Yeah. Love and not, yeah ... betw- between all, between all of these characters. And so I think in the end he’s not, he’s not a strong ally, and maybe even m- m- more detrimental than that to Abby and her, and her dreams.

But I, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know what Quince is just yet. Uh, do you have any thoughts about what you’re seeing in the outline about him?

Jennie: Well, you always wanna ask the question of any character who’s there-

Andrew: Mm-hmm ...

Jennie: how are they making things better or worse [00:27:00] for- Mm-hmm ... your character? Mm-hmm. And depending on the book you’re writing, you know, if this were a romance, we would want allies to lead Abby to love, you know?

Given that this is what it is, we would want allies to either help her solve that, you know, get to where she wants to go, solve the crime, and she’s got those. She’s got Mina. She’s got the friends that she makes. Um, y- you know, in some situations Seward actually helps her, you know? Mm-hmm. So I don’t know that she needs- allies.

So, you know, but it’s just like, why is he there, right? Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s like why does she even have a brother? And, um, in your story, it’s very much about the power that men have, the power that men- Mm-hmm ... wish to keep over creatures and, and [00:28:00] women, and all the things. Like, that’s very much about what this story is.

And, um, you know, it strikes me that the worst kind of, worst kind of thing for Abby would be someone she thinks is fighting for who- her who’s, who’s really not, and- Mm-hmm ... she certainly has that in, in Seward. Um- Right ... so maybe the brother mirrors that in a certain way, um- Right ... that I know what’s best, I’m a man after all.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: You know, uh, and to your point, he is the generation that Seward’s trying to secure the future for.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: Right? Yeah, yeah. Young men will- Mm-hmm ... rise up and take control of the people- Mm-hmm ... and the creatures, and the institutions, and Quince is not worthy of that, for sure, but that’s- Right ... [00:29:00] what makes it interesting, right?

Yeah,

Andrew: yeah.

Jennie: He’s, he’s not, uh, he’s kind of a spineless, feckless, you know, guy who just by nature of his gender gets all this power.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: Um- I don’t know if I’m- Yeah,

Andrew: and it- ...

Jennie: answering the question.

Andrew: No. Absolutely. Yeah, no, these are, these are all good questions that I have to, uh, that I have to consider. ‘Cause, like, I think, yeah, he definitely occupies a place of privilege.

Um, you know, his father owns a law firm, and, and Quince is going to inherit this law firm, and he’s gonna be the head of this law firm at, at, at some point. And maybe that happens during the story. I haven’t dec- I haven’t decided if, if their father is going to, to die over the course of this, uh, of this story or not.

And so what is the, who is the man that he is going, that he will become?

Jennie: So, yeah. I like that question, right? Yeah. Who, right, who is the man that he will become? And a scene that you might [00:30:00] want to write for your own self- Mm-hmm ... even if it doesn’t end up in the story, is the scene where Abby goes to her brother and says, “Help me talk to Dad.”

Andrew: Mm-hmm. “

Jennie: I, I want to do this thing, and, and I, he, you know, you need to- Yeah ... stand with me.” I’m just scanning through. He doesn’t, Quince doesn’t go to the funeral.

Andrew: He does not go to the funeral.

Jennie: So that’s interesting. Um- Mm-hmm ... yeah, so I would write that scene where she goes to him, ‘cause I think that’ll- Mm-hmm

tell you a lot. Is, is he like, “Yes, I will do anyth- anything for you, dear sister, uh, even confront our father”? Mm-hmm. Or is he, um, trying to talk her out of it, and she has something on him to get him to help her? You know, like, where, I think you’ll get [00:31:00] his position in that conversation. Um, you know, what... But I, you’re painting a picture of a guy who doesn’t have to do anything to claim his place in the family and s- in society- Mm-hmm

all the things, and I feel like he could represent what, why this is not a good idea for, um, this to be the way of the world.

Andrew: I, I, yes, I, I agree. I agree. And I really like that, I really like that idea of fleshing out that scene between, between Abby and Quince.

Jennie: Um- ‘Cause you’ll know. Yeah. And it’s, to your point, the texture of these relationships that are going to, to matter. But I suspect that... It’s funny, um, I’m thinking of a, a sister and a brother that I know th- that, uh, are very much like this, where this sister is just [00:32:00] sharp and strategic and on it and all the things, and the, and the brother is just really not...

Like, I know some people in real life like that. Yeah. You know? Yep. And so that’s an interesting dynamic, too- Mm-hmm ... is that she’s- Ah, clever and strategic and smart and, and all the things, and he’s not

Andrew: And he’s not. Yeah. He’s not any of those things.

Jennie: No. Yeah. So yeah, I would write that scene as a way to- Yeah

to figure it. Looking through, um... Yeah, some of my comments were about the, um, the deepening, uh, terror to, to make sure it feels like it’s closing in on her. So these messages she gets from Mina, does she know where they’re coming from?

Andrew: Not at first, no, and I’m still, like, trying to develop- [00:33:00] what the vampire’s powers are in my story.

Um, every vampire, every vampire story, every vampire novel does it a little bit differently. Um, I like the idea of there being some sort of, uh, telepathic element between, between, um, Mina and her, uh, and her daughter, uh, Brianna. Is that something all vampires can do for all, a- against all humans? Is it just because they have a mother-daughter, uh, tie?

I don’t know. And so, um, I still need to, I still need to flesh out what exactly vampires can do in my, in my, in my story. But I like that idea of her being able to just get inside Abby’s, Abby’s head, and not, like, force her to do things, but just, like, kind of whisper some advice into her, into her ear. Um, and I think, I think that’s the difference between what Mina is doing versus what the men around her are doing, who are trying to force her down t- a [00:34:00] certain path.

Mina is trying to encourage her on her own path, um, and, uh, and, and look out, and look out for, for, um, uh, for other dangers, uh, that, that she may not see coming.

Jennie: Ooh, that’s such a good point that you just made, that you don’t want this voice in her head to be another version of people telling her what to do.

Andrew: Right.

Jennie: Um, and also the thing you’re pointing to here is a whole system of magic, basically. What is this- Yeah ... system of magic here, right? Yes, exactly. Um, I’m reading a book, um, right now, which I’m really enjoying, called Scorpica by J.R. McAllister. It’s- Okay ... it’s a series, it’s fantasy. Um, and there’s these, there’s a land with five queendoms, and, uh, it’s a matriarchal [00:35:00] society, and, um, we’re in crisis in this world because no girls are being born.

Uh, there’s like- Oh, okay ... they call it the drought. Um-

Andrew: Ah ...

Jennie: uh, so it’s a society ruled by women. No, no girls are being born. Mm-hmm. And there’re, um, there’re magicians. There’s these five lands, and one of the lands, there’s magicians, and they have, um- The girls are born with certain gifts or powers, um, and, and they have to figure out what they are as they grow.

That’s part of their, um, you know, what they must do is what is, what is my gift here? But, uh, I’m bringing it up because there is a, um, highest level gift, uh, that is the ability to get into somebody else’s mind, and it’s interesting- Right ... how it’s handled in this story, obviously a totally different genre- Mm-hmm

and everything from you. Sure, sure. But [00:36:00] it’s, it’s just interesting, um, when there’s a girl we’re following who has this power, and how she realizes it and how she uses it and, you know, it’s scary to, uh, to know someone’s thoughts. And, um, there’s so all kinds of dynamics involved in that. But the point that I’m making, not very well, but this, this book has so many layers of, um, systems that the author has worked out, right?

There’s a government system, there’s a system of, um, worship and spirituality, there’s system of, uh, war and, uh, fighting. There’s a fighting culture. Um, there’s a system of trade that plays a big part in it, and food, and like, I mean, that’s obviously what’s amazing about fantasy is just the depth of the- Yeah

the imagination that the author’s worked out. Mm-hmm. But I, I am telling you [00:37:00] that because the more thorough you can work out what the vampires can and cannot do, the better it’s gonna be for the story. ‘Cause I, I’m guessing that that’s gonna play a role at the end when Mina offers something to Abby, which is, “Come live with me.”

I don’t think it’s just, “Here’s a bed and a house,” right? Right.

It, it probably has something to do with these powers and- Yeah ... especially that what Abby longs for is agency.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: Is that a way to get agency? That’s, that’s something I would think about is- Mm. So that her choice at the end is com- [00:38:00] complicated.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennie: So when you’re thinking about the- Yeah

magic, I would- Yeah ... think about how does it make her, Abby’s choice harder.

Andrew: Right.

Jennie: What do you think of that?

Andrew: Yeah, and so, yeah, can the magic be transferred to, to Abrianna, I guess is the question, and- If so, would she have to become a vampire to get those powers, or would she, um ... Is it, um, is, is that what you’re suggesting the choice is then, is then to become a vampire and gain some agency and with, with this power, or to stay human?

Jennie: Yeah.

Andrew: And ... Yeah.

Jennie: Because Mina has ... So this is what’s so interesting, is that Mina has what the men have, or think they have, which is the ability to control people. [00:39:00] She could use that for evil.

Andrew: Potentially, yes. Yeah.

Jennie: Right? And I imagine some vampires do.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: So you’d have to make a decision about, like you said, do all vampires have this- Mm-hmm

mind? I mean, it’s really interesting because when you think about w- what do the vampires do? There’s literal entering of the body with their teeth. Right. Mm-hmm. Like, their ... And, and the blood. Like, there’s, there’s a line has been crossed. Yes. And what passes through that-

Andrew: Mm-hmm ...

Jennie: membrane, if you will, or that, you know, normally doesn’t pass between two people.

There’s no- Right ... um ... I mean, in some ways a mother conceiving a child is quite close to that.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: Like two humans, [00:40:00] I don’t know what the word I’m looking for is. Intermingling?

Andrew: Right. Yeah.

Jennie: Uh, so yeah, these questions about do all vampires have that? Do they only- Mm-hmm ... have that once they- bite somebody or give blood- Right

to them? Yeah. How do- Do men, right, do men have it? Do, do- Do women have it? Like-

Andrew: Yeah, if they don’t all have it, how do they, how does, how is it decided that they get, uh, which, which have it and which don’t?

Jennie: Right, and did Mina get it by inheritance, by something she did, by accident? Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Did she get it, did she get it...

Yeah, did she get it from whoever turned her into a vampire, and so it is, it is kind of genetic that way? Um, so it is, it is something she could give, give to, to Abby.

Jennie: Right, and it’s gotta be, you’ve gotta also... This is why it’s so hard to write, y’all, right? Like- ... not only do you have to figure out this magic, but you have to figure out, is Mina, is [00:41:00] there a neutral or not neutral way of using this magic, and what is Mina doing?

Yeah. Is this the first time she’s used it in this way with her child? Mm-hmm. Or does she use it in this way every day?

Andrew: Yep.

Jennie: Do, are vampires forbidden from using it in this way? Mm-hmm.

Andrew: What is their, what is their code of conduct?

Jennie: Yes. Yeah. So it’s not just- Yeah ... the magic, it’s the- Mm-hmm ... use, use of it, and, you know, is, is Mina literally sticking her neck out for her child?

Andrew: Right.

Jennie: And, and this really, the questions really matter because you’re talking about a world in which there’s a girl or a young woman trying to not be controlled by the men-

Andrew: Yeah ...

Jennie: and to have agency.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: So her way out, I don’t think we want for her to be controlled by a woman. That, that doesn’t feel any better.

Andrew: [00:42:00] Right. No. Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a, that’s a very good point.

Jennie: So interesting. So Mina’s got to guide Abby in a way that maintains her agency.

Andrew: Right.

Jennie: And then at the end, I think the offer has to be... And I, and that was what my comment was. I keep saying that that offer that Mina makes at the end feels like it’s kind of coming out of the blue or sticking out or something, ‘cause it’s not baked into the story.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: If it’s baked into the story, it’s gonna be like, “Oh, no, everything is resolved, but now she has- Right ... to choose,” or she has this incredible choice. I mean, it could be- Yeah ... really epic- Mm-hmm ... tragic.

Andrew: It needs, but it needs to be hard. Needs to be a

Jennie: hard choice. It needs to be so hard. It needs to be the hardest.

Mm-hmm. Harder, harder than everything she’s been through, I think. [00:43:00] I think you actually have created a more awesome and complex story than you even thought

Andrew: I think I have, and it terrifies me.

Jennie: Does it?

Andrew: A little bit, a little bit. Um, as I feel like the, the, the... as the story gets more complex, I’m introducing more characters, and I f- I’m worried that it’s turning in, I’m tu- it’s turning into, like, the worst parts of like, a, a, of a terrible Russian novel and, like, there’s just, there’s- I’m just worried that there’s gonna be, like, too many, there’s gonna be too many for, like, all the, for everybody to follow.

Like, “What the, who the hell is he talking about now? Who is, who is this person? Well, we haven’t seen them since page six. What is he bringing them in now for?” So, like, that, that’s something I, I’m, I, I have some, I have some concerns about, but, um, I can table those for now.

Jennie: Okay, so let’s recap about- Yeah ... what has to be done here.

So I would say keep writing. That’s, I think it’s a right thing to do. Good. But if you [00:44:00] can-

Andrew: Mm-hmm ...

Jennie: keep this document, like, maybe make a new iteration of it.

Andrew: Yeah, I gotta clean this up. This is... Yeah.

Jennie: Uh, the term that I use is it’s, it’s an as is outline. So that means you’re recording what you have. So- Mm-hmm

when you write the first scene, you go back here and you, you put in what you actually have, not what you wanted to have, but what you actually have.

Andrew: Okay.

Jennie: And if there’s something that needs to be fixed or changed or tweaked the next time through, you record that almost just as a bullet point.

Andrew: Okay.

Jennie: Need to go back- So up-

and XYZ.

Andrew: Okay. So update the outline as I write the, as I write the chapters. Okay.

Jennie: Exactly. So that then the question that you just brought up, like, “Wait, we haven’t seen this person since scene two,” or whatever, will be- Mm-hmm ... really easy to track. Okay. You’ll be able to look at the outline [00:45:00] and say, “Oh yeah, it’s true.

They’re, they’re not-” Yeah ... you know? Mm-hmm. And so this is where the outline grows to- Right ... nine, 10, 15 pages because you’re, now you’ve got the nuance, you’ve got the detail. So, so I would do that. And then the, um, the system of magic in the... I’m using magic just ‘cause I’m reading that other book Um, of, in the vampires.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: And, and the role that, that mean is going to play with the magic both in the story and at the end. And then the two other things we talked about were tightening down Seward’s worldview, um, cohesion, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That his, his reasons for doing what he’s doing, uh, a- all make sense to him in this [00:46:00] specific way.

And I would say in your own mind knowing, knowing the moment when he realizes he, he has to do Abby in in order to... That’s the only way to save her, you

Andrew: know? Right, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah.

Jennie: Or to save- This is- The only way to save her

Andrew: is to kill her.

Jennie: Yeah, exactly. Or the- Yeah ... yeah, or, or the only way to, to preserve this worldview, she has to go.

Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jennie: Um, and then the, the third thing was the, um, clues. Just the- The clues, yeah, yeah ... more sophisticated- Mm-hmm ... uh, understanding the clues. But if you’re feeling like you can figure out while you write, what I would love to see the next time is some chapters.

Andrew: Okay.

Jennie: If you’re willing to keep going.

Andrew: I am willing to keep going if you’re willing to keep reading.

Jennie: Well, well, it’s funny because listeners will hear in a upcoming episode about a [00:47:00] really interesting and funny, uh, experience I’m having with, uh, another horror writer. Um, this is not a horror- ... uh, podcast. I can’t barely even read horror, so it’s hilarious that that’s- ... that’s what’s happening here. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna do my best.

I’m with you. I wanna, I wanna read these scenes, and I think- Cool ... um, what we’ll do when we read those scenes is we’ll probably stop thinking on a systemic story level, and I’ll, I’ll do some m- more close line editing just so you can get a vibe for that and a sense of that. And then probably you’re just gonna go write the thing, and we’re gonna get- Great.

I know. We’re gonna- ... um, have our listeners be, uh, waiting for that to see how that goes. So we’ll make a- That sound- We’ll make a plan for some chapters. How about that?

Andrew: That sounds great. That sounds great. I love it.

Jennie: Okay. So for our listeners then, thank you for listening [00:48:00] and, um, for cheering Andrew on from afar as he wrestles this story into place.

We, we hope that you are, um, getting inspiration for your own, uh, wrestling. And, um, until then, uh, until next time, let’s get back to work.

The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:49:00] work

With four early nos, she feels encouraged because most responses cite familiarity with her and her work and affirm the project’s purpose, offering specific, non-boilerplate feedback.

She frames these nos as validation and useful information, emphasizes not relying on external approval, and urges writers pitching or on submission to treat rejections as fuel while focusing on enjoying the journey.

Transcript

Hey, it’s Jennie, and before we get to the episode, I wanted to let you know that the June cohort of Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification Program is now forming. This is a year-long training for people who love working with writers, helping them shape ideas, think clearly about their books, and move through the creative and emotional challenges of the writing process.

A lot of our students come from backgrounds in writing, editing, teaching, publishing, or coaching in other fields, and many of them are looking for work that feels more meaningful and more intellectually engaging and sustainable over time. If you’ve been curious about book coaching or wondered whether you might already have the instinct for this work, I’m hosting a free live webinar where I’ll walk through what book coaches actually do and how people begin building careers around it.

You can learn more at bookcoaches.com/webinar1. That’s the number 1. It’s bookcoaches.com/webinar1. I’ll put the link in the show notes, [00:01:00] too. Okay, now onto the episode

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a Write Big session, where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters.

Today, I’m talking about how to manage your mindset around the submission process. In a recent episode, I talked about how my recent book project is out on submission with an agent who’s new to me. She has three batches of publishers that she’s going to submit to, and as I speak to you right now, the first batch is out on submission.

Now, it’s a reality that usually the nos come in faster than the yeses when you’re pitching. If an acquisition editor knows that a project isn’t right for them, it’s [00:02:00] easy to say no. They might already know that they have something like this book on their list already, or they might know that it’s just not for them.

Getting to yes takes more time. An editor who’s interested in a project is going to have to make sure that their colleagues are interested in that project. They’re going to have to make sure that they have the money to offer. They’re going to have to think about which list it’s going to go on. There’s a lot more decisions that go into a yes, and so the yeses take a little longer.

So where I sit today is that we’ve had four nos, and the mindset shift that I’m talking about bringing into this process is that I’m actually thrilled with these nos. My agent is doing this fantastic thing where she has a spreadsheet that she shared with me, and she’s putting the reasons for the no in there, and presumably when we get yeses, she’ll put the yeses in there as well.

But right now, I can log in and I can see who has passed and what their reasons for passing [00:03:00] are. And I’m taking these nos to be really good news because three out of the four of them have mentioned me and my work. The editor knows me and my work. They’re familiar with what I’m doing out in the world.

They understand who I am and what I’m bringing to the table. And for me, that information is everything. It means that the work I’ve been doing has had an impact. It means that I’m in a good position to sell this book. It means that I understood my marketplace positioning well and understood the reason for this book well, and it just feels like validation.

I’m taking these nos to be validation. That’s the mindset shift. The other thing I’m seeing in these nos is a real validation of the need for this project. Even when they’re passing, people understand why it’s a necessary project. They’re saying that it resonates with them. They’re saying things about it that they personally love and that they know writers that they work with will love.

So I’m getting all this validation from these nos, and I [00:04:00] love that. I’m trying really hard with this project not to have external validation be the thing that drives me. I know my book is good, and I’m looking for a publishing partner who knows it’s good and who can help me bring it to life. I’m not waiting to be picked.

I’m not waiting for somebody to tell me that I get to do it. If none of these publishers are the right people and the right partners, I’m doing it myself. Nothing’s gonna stop me. So all of this information is just fuel for my understanding of my own project. This will be my 13th book, and I understand that I’ve been in this business and this process a whole lot longer than a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, and I want to share with you this mindset that I have and this journey that I’m on because it feels so good to be in the submission process with this mindset.

It’s fun. I know it sounds bizarre, but I love logging in and looking at these nos and seeing that validation because they’re not generic nos. They’re not [00:05:00] boilerplate nos. The work that I’m doing is making sense, and that is really everything. So if you’re beginning to pitch or you’re out on submission, I would love for you to borrow this mindset from me and to find a way to turn the people who are saying no to you into fuel for the journey and inspiration to keep going.

That’s how I’m taking it, and I would love for you to borrow a little bit of that, too. I don’t know what’s gonna happen in this submission process. Nobody does. But I feel really good about how I’m going through it, and we have to feel good about the journey as well as the destination. That’s what writing big is all about.

Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.

The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Parrella. Our intro music, aptly titled [00:06:00] Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.