Can't leave the house - let's chat! | Writing/Publishing Q&A

ha all right we're gonna give this a minute to see if it works hello anyone who's seeing this now I'm randomly going live because I need to test stream yard because I'm going to use stream yard from here on to do live streams and in this hour age of Corona and all that jazz I'm gonna try live streaming more I see there's four of you that's cool yes say hi I'm also testing the chat function to make sure I can see you I can see you this is awesome because I'm going to do a bigger live stream at the end of the month on March 28th with a bunch of authors so this is this is my test run hello everyone hi oh this is so cool can you believe it took me this long to try stream yard yeah how is everyone happy Saturday oh yay I know it's a surprise because I never do this cuz I'm terrible I think my last live stream was September 2018 like just me on this channel obviously I did novelty EA up until they discontinued hangouts but this is good too because it's a test and once I know how it works I'll tell Kat and Lainey we can get back on on that so did I watch the Oscars here oh I can do a thing where I show your questions oh this is so fun okay cool man dreamer it's great maybe this is why YouTube just continued hangouts cuz they're like someone else is doing better and yes I love this Cup is that on Katarina nari oh nice this is from I think TJ Maxx or HomeGoods it's a specific kind of cup the Portobello bye inspire my mom used to buy these for me because they're microwave-safe and I love them and they don't break cuz they're like that melamine stuff so did i watch the oscars yes I did it was weird I really enjoyed it it was bonkers it's like they had given up and made it really entertaining and then I just couldn't believe parasite one I was like wow all of those super white boomer movies basically cancelled each other out which is pretty incredible and I got a mute my tab on Gmail because it was making noise oh here oh nice this thank you this is from torrid though funnily enough I bought it the week they put it on the site cuz I was like stars but also it's like a soft tea which I really like it's not on there anymore they sell out of third things really really fast and then they get rid of them what kind of tea I'm drinking coffee this is a French roast from Trader Joe's mmm the quarantine I'm gonna drink so much coffee because I won't drink it at work anymore it's me so strange I'm working from home oh this is so cool here and I'll just like go through these I have to expel ished hi more people join brightly brooding which is Jane Eyre and spaces oh and the sturdy steel it's awesome out I have to get used to that that came out in February and that one is Jane Austen Meets The Bachelor in space and my next one is the IV's so Oh see I'm learning you put it up and then you can hide it this is so cool this is good question yes I am though honestly with all of these cancellations of movies they might push it it's Bunker's ice one movie theater I subscribe to like their updates and they said they won't sell more than 200 tickets for any single showing because of social distancing but at the same time all these studios have already postponed or gotten rid of things so we'll see if the woman in the window makes its regular release date but I am excited because I think it will improve upon the things I didn't like about the book a movie can do that in a good way cuz a strong performance can fix what was poor foreshadowing in my personal opinion I love Amy Adams I adore her she's so talented oh this is a good question alright let's just dive in yeah I mean hit me with questions I didn't prepare anything for this livestream though I do not have my eye makeup on and I thought I could do my eye makeup because people always ask me how I do it so that might be something I do while we talk how do I think coronavirus will affect the publishing industry uh it already has so the big impact so far events are all canceled it's going to impact kind of debuts as well as mid Lister's the most because well debuts because what a time to debut in and they can't have launch parties any events that debuts were booked at they can't go which is a huge bummer and mid Lister's let's talk about mid blisters and below I actually just saw awesome one on Twitter no names being named pooh-poohing like oh guys don't worry it's not a big deal I usually only sell like 10 to 15 books on an event it's fine and I'm sitting here like I would never turn my nose up at 10 to 15 sales that's actually when you are mid list and below they give you're a best seller that's nothing but that said bestsellers and events can sell more like 50 books so they're also looking at pretty decent numbers at any event but if you are less popular those sales make a huge difference especially if you do multiple events over the course of several weeks and spring as a massive event season for publishing those sales can really add up to give you an idea Spall's another really popular book season and the year my book came out I did three events in a row really close together and that week I sold a hundred copies which is more than I'd been selling for a while like it legit jacked my numbers up significantly and it was a really good week for me and that makes the difference I say don't look down on any book sale but that's just me so it's a bummer most publishers are work from home now and the way that I think it's going to disrupt the publishing industry certainly in the short term I think it's twofold one a lot of agents and editors are going to have more time to read so I actually think it's good both querying and authors on submission in terms of getting reading done like people reading them and attention but because no one's going to work anymore it's going to disrupt acquisitions meetings so it's going to disrupt books being bought which will slow things down which sucks because things had slowed down throughout 20 19 and 20 it's 20 20 throughout 2018 in 2019 the specifically 2018 I saw a lot fewer acquisitions it's like everyone in publishing was exhausted and I kept predicting that this sub season sews winter spring 2020 and into fall that we would see a huge uptick in acquisitions because there's almost nothing on the list for 2022 and publishing by several years out and this is going to disrupt that so it's gonna be really really interesting that said what's I say that editors and agents are gonna read more only if they don't have kids because with all of these school cancellations you're gonna have people who are going to have to do full-time childcare that no one was expecting to do and that's gonna disrupt a lot of people and I'm really worried about the economy but it's fine it's it's fine so how is book editing going it's going I am almost act 3 and my goal for this weekend is to get there cuz it should be pretty like decent from act 3 on like I don't have a ton of edits to make oh cool there's 142 of you this is so neat um it's going and we can talk about revision stuff like obviously net details cuz I don't want to blow my entire book because it's still want people to read it but yeah then this is good the posters in the background so these are my mom and I bought them at the farmers market years ago and she who was a good adult help me frame them cuz you know I'm terrible otherwise I had no deck in my apartment until several successive visits from my mother where she made me decorate my apartment I'm really terrible they are former like labels from boxes so like lemons they're actually all lemons in here from California so they're like box labels from brands from like the 1920s and 30s and 40s and you can buy them so I think they're really cool so I bought a bunch and I framed them they're very California and I like retro kind of art advertising style anyway so yeah I'm getting through your comments I'm catching up this is so cool hold on the book like to chat jumped in them oh I'm so behind it's so cool sorry it's so interesting singing readwrite this is a good question well it keeps you going when you're not motivated to rate honestly I have cultivated certain just kind of habits where I've learned to force myself that said sometimes I do take a break but I'll like I'll say to myself all you have to do is this and I'll make it easy like a paragraph or half a C and just look at it like open the thing and look at it and usually I can kind of get into the groove and get something done I basically pep-talk myself and make myself do it and that's when I actually have to like a deadline it's sometimes you should take a break so I've had multiple days during this revision where I just took a break like last night I didn't do anything it was my first day working from home I hate working from home and I went to the grocery store in the evening braving grocery store and I got home super late not just like I'm not gonna work on my revision and that was okay and I gave myself a break so that is good here's ago in is the Stars I seal a specific Jane Austen adaptation or just inspired by her I love this question because if you guys watch this channel and I've watch this channel for a while you'll know that it started out and I've promoted it as persuasion in space and as I actually drafted the book I was like oh no it is technically so the romance arc and the setup is persuasion because that is directly what I was inspired by and I was trying to do a retelling of but I had to make certain changes in a good way there are very faithful retellings and I would consider the brightly burning incredibly faithful to some people that's a fault to other it's not and to some fans it's not faithful enough it's fascinating because you're never going to make everyone happy but with persuasion I made a decision pretty early on to be way less faithful because modernizing and adapting it for ye n sci-fi and to fit into a pre-existing universe that I had written was challenging and like for example it soon as I made the change a huge conceit of persuasion is that when words and an don't talk to each other for almost the entire book because social convention at the time men and women to converse casually because that was very scandalous so it was incredibly easy for them to just not talk to each other and sustain this ridiculous thread of core misunderstanding and no one communicating their feelings and that just didn't work for me these are modern teenagers and I need people to speak to each other so it morphed over time and then I added a Bachelor plot line and by the time I did that I made it more kind of like my favorite bits of persuasion Emma and Pride and Prejudice so it's more of a hybrid and it's like my love letter to kind of read and see Jane Austen aspects and tropes more than like specifically one Jane Austen book that's how I see it oh oh this is I have it I have a copy of it a word doc actually PDF that Emily sent to me and I haven't read it yet but I will probably as soon as it comes out I'm going to feel behind so I will read it I've just been on such an aggressive thriller kick that I haven't read a fantasy in a while so not yet this is good when submitting your first book and playing series do you let the agent know that you plan for it to be a series of books this is a delicate dance you should always say complete at X words blankety-blank stands alone but oh what's the phrase I should have this phrase memorize it is a standalone with serious potential there you go it is a standalone with serious potential you shouldn't directly admit you've already planned it as a series you just kind of you say it stands alone but that's the way to do it because the reality is right now in the industry that most publishers are not buying sip series they're definitely not buying trilogies except in very rare cases in fact wicked Saints it's one of the last times that I saw a big v publisher buy a fantasy trilogy like ahead of time like for sure two books is far more common for a deal and sometimes even honestly if book one doesn't take off you don't even get to write a second book in a series serious just haven't performed well in Y a in a really long time I actually think it's cuz we flooded the market with them and also because a lot of people really screwed up their book twos but yeah do I have advice on drafting for plan sirs this is a Coppa but honestly watch every video I've ever done but especially in the last year about my writing price yes cuz this is me now I'm my latest one watch my write a thriller backwards video draft a thriller backwards that is the latest way that I had been writing because I do fall in the middle between pantsing and planning and it's really helped me kind of figure out my books ahead of time and kind of go through them and another thing I use which I mentioned I don't know if I mentioned that that video but I do mention it in my new writing process video which I posted in the fall something I do constantly as I'm writing but especially not to which is the hardest it's the one-act I cannot outline for the life of me ahead of time other than like a few points I stopped as I'm writing I've done this in revision too and I jot down a series of both cause and effect so things that need to happen or need my character to do but also questions that they should be asking at this point in the manuscript and I literally just write out this series of things that need to happen in the next few scenes and then I write those and then I stop again and I do it again and so it's like bread crumbing my way through the harder parts of the novel but I cannot do it ahead of time or I'll die basically what is my least favorite book of my least favorite writer I don't even know if I can answer oh I try not to read books I don't like here I'll show the question briefly I honestly genuinely try not to read books I don't like in authors that I don't like I avoid stuff like that ahead of time um oh keep thinking about in case something comes to mind but nothing immediately comes to mind that is so cool oh did you did you get any of my doughnuts am I really stay they were delivered to the office and no one was there so apparently other people ate them which is good I'm glad someone enjoyed them oh yeah that was fun um [Music] Joey I think bookcon will be canceled I have a feeling it might be to be perfectly honest we haven't seen any major May cancellations yet though so I think everyone's waiting to see how things progress so they can tell you from the event planner sites so I've planned multiple Harry Potter conventions they're really really expensive and Harry Potter conventions are on the low end of expensive they cost a little over $100,000 usually at least at least mine dead and we were charging for tickets so I know booked on charges but I'm thinking of all of the poor book festivals that don't even charge would still cost a lot of money to put on all of these events canceling or losing hundreds of thousands of dollars this is going to be really really bad for a lot of people economically so I imagine book on which is run by Reed Elsevier my mom used to work for them is holding on to the last possible minute because the cancellation means hundreds of thousands of dollars just flush down the toilet so that's my guess in fact book on might be one of the more expensive ones something like a comic-con that probably cost millions bigger shows cost more money so yeah I think they're gonna hold off into the last minute to cancel that this is this has to be good for e-books right honestly probably although it sucks is that publishers are so I haven't made this a secret but I also haven't specifically talked about it I loathe traditional publishers ebook policies FYI like I love traditional publishing I'm all-in but there are things they do that I hate and one of the things they do that I hate is a ebook pricing or one ebook pricing - they are misers when it comes to libraries and ebooks they're horrible they'll only allow 20 people to check out an e-book some cases it's 12 and the ebooks that the libraries have to buy are more expensive than regular ebooks so they're how they have to spend 40 $50 on a gosh-darn ebook which is just stupid um and some of them don't play nice with the different kind of readers and actually this isn't just ebooks but fun fact for audio audible doesn't do overdrive which is why most audible exclusive audio books are not available in libraries mine is it which sucks we've got lots problems with ebooks so in this time when everyone's home and needs to read most of these libraries are gonna run out of their ebooks which sounds crazy because it's digital and there should be a limitless supply but I think it's it's really gonna expose this particular crack in the industry the way that traditional publishing handles ebooks on libraries is abysmal in my personal opinion and they're generally overpriced you shouldn't pick an e-book shouldn't cost the same as a physical book cuz a festival book you have to pay to print the paper I think it's stupid anyway let's see I'm catching up on questions Oh book con discussion yes here just music help me right yeah it does but it's usually classical not always I do have some pop playlists I've used to pop playlist for the IV's and the surgery steel but I didn't for brightly burning I used only are like movie scores for that and it really depends is something's too like wordy like something I like and I want to sing along too I will think about the lyrics of the song rather than words on the page which is fire like movie scores a lot this is a very good question no only because I well I have distanced myself pretty decently from fanfiction to be honest it was 8 million years ago I wasn't that popular in first place so that works out I highly doubt many people remember me so it's good there are a couple things right slate yeah but um generally no um but I also think that writers fanfic writers should be allowed to like fall into their fandoms and like do whatever like crazy things they're gonna do I don't think it's indicative of their real lives and I don't think it should control them forever so I don't specifically have regrets but I was doing fanfiction during the Dark Ages hello I'm internet old which means I'm from LiveJournal and before that yahoogroups so old when fandom and mainstream culture were like very strictly separated we literally had in fandom norms of never talking about it or revealing the secrets of fandom to people and you would socially ostracized people who did it like I don't know who it was but I'm still mad at whoever had the Phelps twins from Harry Potter from the movies hold up a sign about twincest don't break the fourth wall phantom but that's different now phantoms very mainstream and you're allowed to say that you write fanfiction I dunno I kept it a secret for more than 10 years so I think writing it now is very very different I would make very different choices if I were in phantom now so if you're a young phantom person and you plan on pursuing professional publication either keep those two worlds completely separate or I don't write certain things will you write more since social interactions are not recommended honestly it's not gonna make any difference to me I'm on deadline for my book I have this is this is one weekend and next weekend is my second last weekend to write it to work on it and so I'd already cancelled all my plans I had no plans for the entire month of March for the weekends because I have to write won't make a difference honestly isn't that sad yeah I think writers who hadn't been on deadline will their writing productivity is gonna increase I think that said I think that it's very easy to get anxious and anxiety does not help with creativity so it's a thin line I've been trying not to psych myself out this is pretty freaky where do you draw the line between inspiration versus copying also I love this feature straight maritime super it um inspiration versus copy it that is also a thin line everything's a thin line right now if it feels like fanfiction you're too close if it if like for example if it's a young boy he discovers he's a wizard and he goes to boarding school and he makes two friends a girl a boy and there's big bad tried to kill his baby you're writing Harry Potter fanfiction generally anything that's a little too close to specific systems and another thing that said there's a lot you can get away with do you know how many uya books have come out or are coming out that are literally Avatar The Last Airbender with like small tweaks so many and they all got away with it so what is the line between inspiration and copying it's what you can get away with isn't that bad that's true though and I mean same thing there's actually a rich culture a remix culture in literature and in media period which is why retellings are a thing like sometimes people would be like well you don't really write real novels because they're retelling so it's not original and I'm like but it's part of a rich literary tradition just because you're inspired by a previous story which is literally the history of all literature media doesn't mean that your execution of something isn't original it really is about how you execute it and also what you're riffing off of there is a difference between copyright free classic stories and something that's on television right now and you're really inspired by it and you want to write something similar with the same characters it's very very different and the legalities are literally different as well huh yeah I love it Oh for context anyone who's watching if he doesn't know my background I worked with college admissions stuff for a couple of years really though to be fair I got a refresh my lipstick hold on I can literally see it wearing off in the video can I just say that I use these but I hate this wonder Beauty thing where it's mini lipsticks that and I really love this color and I don't like this one and I cannot buy this one in a full-size and I think that's really dumb that they do anyway so I specifically helped with essays essays have been my bread-and-butter so I've helped underprivileged girls in Los Angeles with their college admissions stuff for six years Wow yeah a long time and primarily its essay help but because they are part of a it's a writing organization that I volunteer with and because they're generally underprivileged they don't have a lot of access to information we help with everything so selecting the schools that you're going to apply to financial aid information I love all of it so I've done kind of that whole cloth stuff with them and when you help low-income students with college admissions you learn a lot about privilege and college admissions well plus I attended an elite school in a scholarship so wait I know I know a lot about things and then I professionally was also paid to help kids with SATs for a couple of years the only reason I stopped is because I got a book deal and my deadlines became super overwhelming but so I I've done like kind of that side I've helped tons of kids with their essays and I've also just like bid on college confidential more than is advisable and applying to college it doesn't subreddit and you just get the lay of the land with parents and financial aid and other consultants and so I saw the scandal coming a mile away kind of accept what is stupid about it to me and there have been articles about this and nothing only when saying it what I think is backers there were already a ton of really easy ways for rich people to get their kids into elite schools and it wasn't cheating if you make us big enough donation you can get your kid into a school everyone knows that if you get a good enough coach admissions coach there are tens of thousands of dollars they're really good ones and you get them years in advance they can strategize to get your kid into a really good school the thing is it might not be the exact elite school so what floor to me was the the entitlement in that scandal of well no it's not good enough for them to get into a top ten school I want it to be this top ten school that they're not qualified to go to so I'm going to cheat little ridiculous so it amuses me I had started the IV's before it happened and I actually had been I hadn't I actually did STEMI outlined the book and one of the points I had was SAT scam questioner mark and I was halfway through my draft and I had decided like two weeks before you know it's probably not you know it's a little too complicated to have us SAT scam in this book and then that happened and I was like going back in so the federal scam actually gave me some great ideas I'm not a cheater by nature I'm not devious so I didn't exactly know how to cheat on your SATs and now I do know oh okay beta readers um so this is hard I have a stable of people that I've just known for years so to be perfectly honest the way now that I choose my beta readers it's the same people it's always been it's like this group of friends who are all either agented or published some aren't interested yep but like I've known them for like six or seven years and I just trust them and I trust their stuff because I've read and cp4 them and depending on kind of how busy they are I'll go to people who I think have time and be like hey can you read this or if they have like a specific area of expertise I need I do not have coronavirus and actually the sad thing about it is I always need tissues and I'm almost out because I have a severely deviated septum and my sinuses buried me absolutely insane so I sniffle in public all the time and people probably think I'm toxic but I'm not I'm not sick so originally though how I picked them out and I do take on new people they just tend to be like authors in my circle mmm mentors or people in my DP group um well in Thursday hasn't for the project matters honestly when you throw your pitch out there if someone genuinely enthused get them to read it cuz like they are most likely to be similar to your target readership because you want your target readership to be excited about your book so you can get some really good opinions from people like that because they are your target readership whether I trust that they're a good writer honestly matters to me I do think about that so obviously in early days you're mostly going to do beta swaps so it's good it's good to look at their writing look how sophisticated is their pitch are they aware of the market like will this survive in the market and then how do they execute it do you trust their writing if you trust their writing you can trust them usually to evaluate evaluate your writing so those are things that I would definitely consider oh I could give you a motivator while writing your books um honestly being published I know that sounds like even before I was published meaning I had a goal and end goal and it helped me keep my eye on the prize I know not everyone is motivated goal motivated or deadline motivated like that or and you know I say all the time you shouldn't need external validation to write and that is true in the hardest like moments that should be true you should want to finish it because you want to finish it because you care about the story but honestly when it's really really hard it does motivate me knowing like on the first book it was I really want to have a book in book stores and you can't unless you finish something that did genuinely help me and on every subsequent book my second book because the first one doing a published same thing I was even hungrier because the first book failed and I was like I have to finish this because I have this goal and then that didn't work so same behind the third one I had this aggressive goal of like at that point I needed a new agent so honestly what got me through that book was I have to finish this quickly and it has to be really really good because I want a new literary agent and I'm only going to query really good literary agents like top-of-the-line agents of sales and then after that of course I had a contract so the second one it was not so much being published because I was guaranteed it was in my contract it was kind of II published it was not embarrassing myself that was my motivation on the source lease deal don't embarrass yourself make it better etc and then on the IDs again the motivation was to be published because it was written out of contract I needed to sell it so like either getting an agent or actively selling a book or not embarrassing myself those those tend to be my motivations and they help me so and I think that publication is a pretty good goal to push you through when it's hard whether you're self-publishing or traditionally publishing so but that can also be a double-edged sword because then it doesn't work out you feelings/emotions mail have some emotions is it harder to oh here is it harder to publish a series of books rather than a standalone as a debut author yes it's definitely harder to sell a series as a debut now I don't think it's gonna stay like that forever I think everything cycles back I think it's only gonna take a few really juicy do ologies and trilogies to kind of get that appetite going again and it's gonna be a matter of publishers trusting and hedging bets and having the kind of money and risk tolerance to do it uh but generally it's way easier to stay to sell as a standalone and if you are planning series you make that first book standalone that's how you that's that's your best bet for sure what am I reading right now I am reading who did you tell by Leslie Cara she wrote on the rumor which I read last year I had problems with rumor I still liked it but it turned out the reason I had the problem it had been set in the UK and for some reason for the United States they changed it so instead of a village in the UK a seaside village they made it a random town in Massachusetts but kept a lot of the British isms and it didn't fit this one's actually set in Britain um it's a little like I got to 27% last night and then finally it kind of got to the inciting incident it's a slow burn I don't know how I feel yet about it but I just read his and hers by Alice Feeney five star so good it's a married blog which just posted so good and I feel really terrible reading all of these amazing thrillers that you guys can't read for months and months and months but his and hers was really really good so P I really hope they adapted for television specifically let's see ah re me chat jumped again it's hard to keep up I don't want to skip too much at the same time I feel like I'm missing stuff alright so bear with me while I go back to find where I left off and yeah oh gosh there's so many questions I love it keep going oh it literally has like I can't even go back further okay I'm probably gonna miss some of your questions and I do apologize alright this is a good question how long do you suggest trying to create a book before giving up and self-publishing it depends first of all if your goal is traditional publishing if even if you give up on a title don't self publish it write another book try coring again if you're like like dead goal like all you want is traditional publishing because if you self publish a book that's your debut there are like exceptions for kind of getting over that but it's always best if traditional publishing is your end goal not to self publish something that doesn't work well inquiries that said if you do still want to self publish something that didn't work well inquiries that's fine I personally don't think there are a hundred good agents for most books I would give up around the 50 Merc maybe 75 suddenly even that's pushing it for me personally you're speaking to someone who only never queried more than 30 agents though that said there are fewer agents who representations but also I had very high standards I I mean I I rail in the cement you know all the time don't crash may gents don't query mediocre agents they're literally a waste of your time you will throw away years of your life and your career signing with a bad agent so my that's why my preference is always write another book to get the agent that you want so 50 75 queries time-wise the problem is the agents are slower than ever in the past I might've said a year honestly now it might be a year and a half or two years because of how freaking long it can take to query a book you can still have a shot with an agent they just might take nine months to read it which isn't great not great to be honest but that is the lay of the land now and in that time I would expect you to write a new book that you come in query so that's kind of kind of my benchmark teeth what kind of coverage do you hate ugly ones that's very subjective that's I don't like really cheesy covers which of course there are plenty in my a um I don't like covers that all look the same and that's a lot of them right now um like gee do you have that problem to you guys like I do where it's like you see an Illustrated cover and you think it's another book lipstick that's a problem now I don't hate those covers like they're not horrible but I wouldn't want that to happen to me I wouldn't want my publisher to give me a cover that looks like everyone else's cover um that's a good question yeah like kind of uncanny valley that's a good I hate uncanny valley covers this is where like usually when there's people on them where they look like creepy dolls who might murder you don't like that at all like like where it's almost too photorealistic or not photo realistic enough it's uncanny valley covers where like I think I might die I don't like those and then just ugly colors I've colors I hate which is purely subjective um was public speaking ever a challenge for you coming into the IRL writing community you seem very well practiced thank you yes it used to be the reason I will practice this is my advice one start a YouTube channel if you watch my early video because I'm pretty stiff actually and you just get used to it and you warm up I mean unless you don't some channels don't but I did when you edit yourself you listen to yourself and you're like oh no and you pick up your tics and if you're smart you can fix them so I become a relaxed I also generally if you are doing YouTube don't script your videos I never have of some people have accused me on my early videos I'm like no I'm just really sniffing her on camera but I genuinely I know some people love scripting their videos and I get it but I think that to become truly practiced in public speaking you have to learn how to speak off the cuff naturally when responding to questions or topics that's how you get good with even speeches because you you will script a speech I've given one speech so far it was at a library conference I haven't l-like a keynote or anything but I'm panels you can't really script so you have to get used to it and that's the other way that I did this long before my YouTube channel I moderated a ton of panels cuz I was a volunteer at DragonCon and part of working for Dragon Con is the track staff mods all their panels and I got really comfortable I had to come up with the outlines for the panels I was modding and then it was my job to do introductions for for authors and field questions to them and I got really comfortable just being on the stage and when I loved about modding I genuinely recommend this is like a slow slide I volunteer at your local book festivals or at your local bookstore to moderate conversations with authors or cons because in pressures off you you don't have to give brilliant answers to any of the questions you just have to do a nice introduction with limited stumbling and throw questions at other people and then listen to them and nod as they talk and like kind of look for opportunities to kind of facilitate conversation I loved it but it got me very very comfortable in front of a couple hundred people at a time and it's just practice you do it over and over and over again and you get better and better at it but I am the person in high school and college who would make herself sick about even answering questions in class but let alone public speaking so it's a skill that you can develop over time and I recommend that authors do it even if you have social anxiety the number one best thing you can do for your career is become more comfortable looking yourself listening to yourself and speaking about yourself in your book which is always going to feel awkward but you do get used to it and you also will practice and responses like I can like just throw out answers that sound really similar and pitches for for the books I love this question no do I think physical books will cease to exist no never hardcore book people prefer physical books we also read e-books like you're not not hardcore if you prefer ebooks but they do surveys and so like data has shown that book people like physical books I don't think they're ever gonna go away I think that it already has diminished number of copies that they print and sell because the e-book market has developed its share but it hasn't really budged I I'm not for a number out of my but if I'm wrong I'm sorry I want to say a book market accounts for 25% of sales approximately maybe even less it for traditionally published titles people overwhelmingly still buy the physical copies that that's definitely accurate for my numbers and and that includes young people I love you Jen Z you're great you still read books books so I don't think they're ever gonna totally go away it is a different experience having a physical copy in your hands it does make a difference it's literally how your brain processes it as well plus I strain you need electricity to read a book you need the money to have an e-reader I think that physical copies of books there's a lower barrier to entry for a low income people as well so I think for many reasons basically not die and I'm happy I do think will again have less and less also just because of paper shortages and expense but I think what we'll see for that honestly is publishing acquiring fewer books rather than necessarily printing fewer copies though they are printing fewer copies print runs have definitely gotten smaller it's better to do a reprint do a new print run than to print too many of a book and then have to trash them like literally you have to shred them pulp them so that's a waste of money yes and also it's never gone away to be honest but also yes uh fantasy Y fantasy is an evergreen genre which is good it's an evergreen genre period it's generally I you find that two kinds of two primary they're just really dominant they're more likely to go mainstream then that's fantasy and contemporary kinds of fantasy high fantasy is a little less successful than grounded fantasy for example it's all about accessibility and contemporaries the ultimate accessible genre so those are evergreen you can always sell books in those areas sci-fi is a lot harder things like historical are also niche or Western and so on fantasy is evergreen but particularly in nya they've never stopped buying and selling fantasy what has changed is the types that they're buying and how big some of them get we well I would have said we haven't had a major or Y fantasy success in a while but then circuit and Dove happened and that I think so you wait until there's something that booms and then that shapes the trend so I think surfing and of is opening the door for really lush lush that's not even the best word it's honestly hardcore romance really romance based why a fantasy I think is coming back and if you think about some of the most popular Y fantasies they all have shipping at the center of them they're pretty romantic and really Shelby moon and serpent and of its it satisfied that itch that SJM fans have surged a mass so I think that's why it really captured the attention of a lot of people and I think we're gonna see more like that but before that the trend for a while was like elemental then we had a lot of court why a like revenge like hard girl court fantasy so it just cycles so all that's changing is what's popular and that said because why I bought a ton of fantasy like 2016 2017 into 2018 and most of them didn't hit which is just numbers like this just statistics but because of that they have tapered off on buying them but it's just it's gonna come back it's gonna come back surging it's always about waiting and writing the right kind at the right time basically here's a super specific question but market romance it really depends how romancey it is and how upmarket it is you might be better off pitching it as a market suspense or possibly just a book like if it is actually up market it could just be a literary novel you could literally put you just as a novel so it really depends romance as a category is incredibly specific like it has to have a happily ever after to actually be a romance if it's more women's fiction II then it's like upmarket women's fiction so it's just depends um market is that nice buzzword that we talked about recently I've started to use it a lot it's great I don't write upmarket but I'm not when I see it I love staying home so yes um because like I said I literally had not planned to leave my apartment so I'm good I cleaned last weekend I always feel more centered when my apartments clean I got tons of coffee I got cats there's one over here sleeping well you're such a good baby they love having me home so that's great I almost start to go stir-crazy it'll probably take me four or five days and then I'm gonna want to leave my house but I'll be fine and I do actually plan on leaving my house I'm going to work next week one day because I need them to fix something with my loaner laptop but it's fine because there's toilet paper at the office so that's good people have lost their minds see jumping back cuz I'm so far behind I mean the question is are the publishers going to respond to this problem and do something about it I am Not sure be really nice if they did though cuz exactly patrons can't even go to their libraries right now it's a huge bummer and selfishly I'm like maybe they'll buy more books so like it's this weird cause and effect where it's like well all the events are canceled but people really want to read so maybe they'll buy more books we're just gonna have to see how that goes I have two cats of the best Teddy and PETA they're fluffy ginger cats Teddy's definitely part Maine pitas like properly Maine though he could be half point is their big ginger fluffy and I love them a lot Maine Coons are basically dog cats they well first of all they choose one person and that person is their person and they tend to stay within ten feet of that person at all times which I can report is true they're very loyal they're good with people to go with other pets one of them mine peanut plays fetch and it's adorable and they also talk to you Maine Coons are very talky so my cats have different like meow sounds they make and I can usually tell what they want the worst one is there's a warble that means they're about to vomit and I will say they vomit all the time they're very long they're long haired and there are cons to that but they're so fluffy I love it I'm sucker for anything fluffy my dream is to get a Newfoundland dog I want a big fluffy animal family um but I live in a small apartment so although the irony is new feelings actually don't need a lot of exercise and do well in small apartments so do Great Danes configure oh I see someone in the comments answered that I fluffy cats yes I do you see them in videos sometimes it's like a Easter egg years ago when what advice do you have for young writers who are struggling to start writing I honestly spent late write fanfic like I know that some people really like rag on fanfic but I'm Pro fanfic honestly obviously because I wrote it for many years and it was my gateway drug I wrote fanfic for 12 years before I even considered writing a novel like it literally didn't occur to me that I was capable of writing a novel in fact I neg done myself I was like never read a book um fanfic helps a lot because certain things already done for you for better for worse but it means that you to hone in on the stuff the fanfic doesn't do that you get to actually do in fanfic like explore characters and be like honest and um like understand the characters as they exist in the source material and then kind of be true to who those characters are that's actually a good skill and once you know who your own characters are you basically do that for your own where but also it's just fun there's a built-in community you can get really good feedback you're not into fanfic and you're struggling to write try reading something else other than novels is what I mean you could try short stories you could try poetry creative nonfiction journaling just kind of it's all about working the muscle of writing and also cutting yourself breaks you don't have to have perfect ideas and write beautiful perfect novels right out the gate so yeah and I have videos on like writing habits and I've got a lot of writing hacks that might help with this as well so we can try watching some of those any tips for picking a pen name sure first thing is do you want to keep your first name I did I like my name and then Amazon stole it uh if not what kind of first name do you want to use this is actually really fun because it's like a fantasy thing it's like who do I get to be and then four last names short and sweet usually works best and I kind of talked about this in my pen names video that one of the double-edged swords of pen names is that it's almost xenophobic in some ways because we tend to pick very Anglo names that are very easy to pronounce I am guilty of this but I'm also English Irish and Scottish so I literally wrote a list of family names that I don't use because they're not my legal name and I picked one of them so Dunn is a family name so it's that was my way of kind of sticking close to my roots honoring my family a little bit but also all of them were short sweet and very British which was nice and my legal name is not but you know you could also stay in culture like defy the odds like still think about spelling and pronunciation I I it is honestly a consideration um but pick a different name that's still in your culture something that has good ring to it you always want to google it you always want to search it on Amazon to see if anyone is using a similar or same name let's see to do as the now a bad time to be clearing with everything going on honestly it's a good time to be grating it's a double-edged sword so I have seen multiple agents and editors by the way say they really want to read something sends them something editors saying that four agents and I definitely know I've seen a few agents being like hey I'm stuck at home time to go through my inbox because going through queries does tend to be an at-home thing for most agents like I know this isn't well known but most agents who work in offices have to do other stuff related to their agent job when they're at the office so like paperwork financed following up with people etc and they don't read queries or books at work not always some of them will have like one day the week that they go through the queries a lot of agents though go through queries at home so now that they're stuck at home I know some of them are clearing their query boxes I I'm helping an a mmnt query right now and one of her queries she got a request yesterday cuz that agent tweeted that they were at home and they were going through their queries but the foot of this um any mention this earlier that any agent with a kid is gonna have less reading time because they have to do full time child care that they don't normally have to do if their kids are in school so yes and no I also think certain types of books are going to do very well right now I think escapist type books are gonna do well if you have actually some agents are going to be in the mood for darker stuff but if you have like a virus as part of your plot or pandemic it's gonna go real 50/50 on whether someone wants to read that and I'm over here like people are they're gonna want to read freely burning or not it F way it has a viral pandemic in it a lot of sci-fi does though so we're good that's either gonna be good or bad when everything's on fire do you want to remind yourself or not I actually have been watching the pandemic documentary on Netflix so I'm clearly that kind of person but at the same time I'm reading thrillers definitely first scape right now so I don't think about it and I also did watch a rom-com last night so I'm doing a bit of both yeah so yes and no but the least you know agents are all home so I say query and also as I mentioned editors are gonna be able to read more but won't be able to buy books so it's a weirdly good time also all these agents can't go to their conferences so I'm gonna say query query defin query oh okay I love that you guys have so many questions I was really worried uh I'd have nothing to talk about I haven't even touched my eye makeup so this is great I know right I'm ancient uh ageism I really shouldn't joke about age as much as I do it's really sad but yeah and I've aged so much in the last year grief ages you and it's incredibly depressing fun fact yeah oh my favorite topic because it's one of these weird things it's like alchemy time-travels the same by the way a thing that does so well in other mediums and just has never taken off in traditional publishing particularly yaa I I can't explain it I can just tell you what it is it can work some books come out and in fact superheroes are a lot like other types of sci-fi like space books if you wait three or four years sometimes five or six there will be a micro trend and like four or five books will come out but then none of them will break out and the cycle starts anew so actually 2020 is a superhero micro trend which means they sold in 2018 and 2019 there are four or five coming out the thing is if none of them break out which we don't expect any of them to do I'm sorry to say try to start anew also most of the ones that are coming out this year are by established authors not debuts that said it's better to have them than not to have them which is good the out light is like so like meaning the outliers suck I mean it's good for the readers but they give false hope to debuts I just I can't explain it they've never done well in Hawaii I can so many titles like thing is people are always like Alexa talks on her ass and his is like thinks she's such an expert I look up sales numbers my agent is amazing and I love her she will set books for me on book scan all the time so for those who are unfamiliar book scan is a tool it's actually not entirely accurate because not all book stores report to book scan but it gives you an idea of how things are doing so if any of you are published by Amazon or just if you're published and you have an Amazon author central account so the NPD Nielsen Bookscan tab so if you're self-published you've access to this too I believe that is basically the public version of book scan which agents and publishers pay to have like a special professional version and it has slightly more accurate numbers in it but basically book scan is how we track how books are selling and when you actually look up books on book scan it's really really fascinating because you can see a ton of hype for a title and really think that something's doing super well and then you look up the actual sales and you feel gas lit by publishing I'm here to tell you that publish eats gas letting you all the time so some of these titles that you see in your like famous authors sold this well if you look up the numbers those books sold less well than other books so there's etc and so internally publishing then has the conversation saying well these books don't sell so they're not going to invest in new ones and that's kind of the cycle that happens and unfortunately it disproportionately affects sci-fi subgenres and tropes because we can't have nice things and everything sucks so I feel it's about that I mean have a whole video about that I have lots of theories about that but I also think specifically superheroes and superpowers is a very visual medium and I think that impacts novels I also have another theory but then we're not going to ramble about that sorry catching up on your questions uh here's here let's just we're gonna I'm gonna Mia culpa um the reason you haven't seen an episode of novelty is because I am responsible for editing the last episode of novelty and I have been so overwhelmed with everything that I haven't finished editing it it's a it's an hour in 30 minutes of footage it takes forever and between my revision deadlines author mentor matched the choices I make my book coming out and continuing to film it upload for this YouTube channel it's 100% my fault but the next episode of novelty has not been posted we have that one that just has to be edited and another one ready to go after it it's it's my fault I'm sorry yeah it's me yeah what are the best and worst parts about querying but also have you tried the Tosti Beauty Blender full I haven't tried the blend of all I really thought about it and I still might buy one because I actually am tempted by the mini that's something that I would probably want to put in my purse because I have an old bareMinerals compact like blotting powder that I the little pad thing got so gross I had to throw it out so I've actually thought again about getting the plentiful just for the mini and I haven't done it yet um but I will say I have it here let me pull it out of the sleeping cat I love this oh look how dirty it is this is the one problem a legitimately amazing product this is such a good palette and if anyone is on the fence about a palette I genuinely do recommend this as a good entry-level kind of neutral to glam Beauty palette this is one my favorite buys in the last six months and I guess who might as well throw shade cuz compared it to makeup geek I got really hyped about this and I bought I bought a palette does not blend as nicely if I want it to and I also I watched this one video by a beauty tuber who was like it's so pigmented and her it looks amazing I don't find these shades go on easy at all so YouTube is full of lies but Tati is the real deal on that palette and I'm not even a super fan I just ended up really liking that palette here talk about myself somewhere it's great do you have an idea for your next book yes I've already started my next book I have 12 K of it and I have it loosely outlined loose like I know what happens in the third act but the second act is a little fuzzy what else is new and it's going to be my proposal for my option for my publisher so as soon as I turn in the nut and the IVs and get that accepted and approved I will start working on it um it's another wife thriller it's set in a small town I'm doing small town secrets which is one of my favorite tropes and I'm really excited to work on it it's honestly I've mentioned this in my last video it is my therapy book the main character has lost her mother and so I'm working out feelings it's gonna be really fun I'm honestly really jazzed and then I have two adult thrillers that I'm working on early stages tried to plot it backwards so for one of them I still I actually for both of them I need to figure out the third act climax before I really work on it plus I want to write the white one first sorry just catching up on your questions this is where it would be so nice to have another person the chat which I will have on March 28th when I do my livestream I'm really excited about that it's just an idea that popped into my head I felt really bad for all these authors with their events being canceled I know how stressful it is in your debut I was lucky to do a ton of events and I can't imagine just having that pull out from under you so a couple the people I'm gonna have join me our debuts so she'll be nice you can learn about some new books and we're gonna talk about stuff and then I just have some friends of mine Rosie thore is gonna join and I'm really excited cuz Sagna menon is gonna be on the live stream fun fact for you she loves YouTube she watches author Tube she's like out there creeping on our videos so she's really awesome I've met her a ton of times in person and were we're friendly and I adore her so that's gonna be really really fun and if there's something you want me to do on the march 28th livestream talk about let me know I'm still kind of planning it out it's gonna be like a mix between formal and informal I don't want to over plan it and I also assume you guys will have questions so that should be pretty cool oh I can answer this one well actually mm-hmm got some hmm how do you answer we redid the easy one first okay is it okay to have different time periods with time travel in one book or is it too confusing for the reader no it's totally okay cuz readers of time travel who will actually pick up that book should be seasoned in the category and in fact will expect you to take a character on multiple Rob's or adventures two different times unless the concept and it's fine two is more like Outlander where someone gets trapped in a time both are completely accepted conventions now your job this is why I mean time travel is hard logically it's one of the harder things to write but also you are expected to research multiple times they need to feel fully immersive and so the hard part isn't so much that the readers are confused but that it's your job to make every time period work and you have to know it well you should be doing research if you were any time travel it's it's a lot like writing a historical but also you need to realistically process the things that would happen and then how your character who is usually coming from a modern lens would react to things how that modern character would blend in or not and what kind of conflicts that might create how they might use modern knowledge to survive in the past so you could totally do it you definitely have a lot of work ahead of you so so this one what's your favorite animated TV show and did you watch any other anime besides Avatar so here's the thing I've never seen avatar like I'm a terrible person hi uh I have friends who are diehard fans and so it's through them that I know that all of these my novels has have basically copied avatar and I know that I should watch it um honestly lately I've only done kind of the adult anime stuff meaning I love Bojack horseman big mouth like kind of those Netflix shows I was honestly never a massive animated series person though though I did go through a Family Guy phase before it was popular cuz I'm a TV hipster I own the DVD use back in the day you know that period where it was a canceled and off the air like that's how old I am um but generally I'm not a massive animated series fan um mostly just cuz a time if I do like My Little Pony Friendship is Magic though there's so much TV to watch and there's just so little time so I tend to gravitate more toward half-hour comedies and dramas uh with actors of course animated series have actors or just voice actors but I like the adult ones on Netflix Bojack horseman made me weep so often it was so good it's dark but good here's a good question I don't know if I can answer it is there something you wish you know about traditional publishing before you started querying um I knew a lot before I started querying because I'm crazy I did a lot of research and part of the reason I have this YouTube channel and I like to share is cuz I had learned all this stuff um that is technically available to learn but it's not all in one place and so one of the reasons I do this is cuz it's like I want you to have the knowledge and so I went in being pretty realistic like ranging to like pessimistic in some ways um I guess the one thing that I have learned that I mean even if I'd known I know point is it's always going to be the one thing that you really want even if you don't admit it to yourself that you will not get from publishing specifically traditionally publishing but just generally publishing and it's gonna hurt the most and you almost can't prepare for it but maybe you should I had a couple secret hopes and aspirations that I've definitely not gotten and it bothers me more than I like and I I kind of wish I'd prepared emotionally for it but it's same time like I said I don't know if I could have um things like you know secretly hoping for a start rate of you know hasn't happened it's fine yeah whatever ah polishing dress but really the feelings you have to be prepared for the rollercoaster of feelings and then there's always moving goal posts and there's always going to be something else that you want and you'll probably never be satisfied so yeah that's a lot let's see yeah this is good what is the best technique to avoid having too much dialogue and more description so first of all if you tend toward dialogue first don't fight your instincts it might mean that you're very good at dialogue in your first draft right the way you write your job in editing is it's all about action tags and avoiding white room syndrome most often when you have too much dialogue this is what you're gonna have where people talk at each other and maybe you have a ton of dialogue tags like he said she said or maybe you even have descriptive dialogue tags which can get really fanfic II you can't waste Fourche out everything or like Archer eyebrows it everything that said convert actions and to action tags so you basically learn I've taught myself this because I'm from fanfic I've always been very dialogue first um to create a visual picture through a dialogue scene your job once you vomited the dialogue out it's not just how people say things it's what they do as they're talking and using what they do as they're talking to actually more accurately depict how they're feeling what they're saying so that you can cut down on telling in those dialogue tags and action tags think about physical things like how a character is carrying themselves do they move in the space things are too static can you literally change the setting of the conversation can they walk outside while they're talking so it's kind of like reading the spaces between lines of dialogue but also understanding sometimes you do you want the dialogue to be fluid with very little breaking it up and where are the natural pauses within your dialogue scene where you can let the reader orient themselves with what a character's feeling or doing so it's kind of learning to beef things up but also of course cut unnecessary that dialogue look for places where sentiment is repeated if the same piece of information is being repeated more than once you usually need to cut one of them you can also cut filler there are things that you might on first thing and sting to write out that a character does need to do for example most of us like don't refer to people's names all the time and I've done this where it's like this very this instinct if you'd like use their name all the time you can cut a bunch of those you can cut transitional words that we do indeed say it's realistic to say like yeah I don't know of course so but you can still trim some of those to make the dialogue crisper and a bit more effective those are some tips to kind of like creep balance and make that better to do still reading I'm such like yes I read poetry so funnily enough the poetry reduced by teenage girls because at rate girl everyone loves poetry right girl loves poetry we do poetry all the time so usually I'm reading a poetry of teen girls it's annoyingly good they're better than I am at a lot of things um but I I think only particularly kind of so full people hold on to a love of poetry into adulthood I'm like I mean that as a compliment whereas I find like it's really common to love poetry as a teenager particularly teenage girls started to make that about gender but I've observed that and rate girl um so meaning I loved poetry a lot more as a teenage girl so my favourites are old school when I was a teenager I adored Sylvia Plath adored so emo read The Bell Jar it's good but her poetry is amazing too and Thomas Hardy I enjoyed Thomas already period I love tests the d'Urbervilles but Tom sorry too about some great ass poetry so that's that's kind of how I'm gonna go I know that's not modern oh and I he Cummings who doesn't like EE Cummings oh and there was one there was one specific poem that I adored in school and it was by Eleanor Wiley I want to say it's called C lullaby that was my favorite poem in high school look it up it's about a child dying and it's really beautiful to recite it in class and so I've always liked that see III think it's a natural thing to love poetry when your teen I wrote some abysmally horrible poetry about the boy I had a crush on because I was email glad I got over that I hope could be in a box somewhere at home but I hope I burned it so I have two answers to this question do you think anyone can become a writer and get a book published yes and no I think anyone can theoretically become a writer and get a book published meaning anyone who wants to who puts in the work who develops their toolkit there's still time and luck involved but meaning I think that engineers can 100% become writers and publish books they do I have a couple friends who started more in the sciences unlike the engineering or tech writing side and their writers I do think it's it can be a tougher climb some of those friends of mine they've had to work harder to overcome telling in their writing because obviously there's more technical writing in certain fields straightforward direct writing but also they can have a very refreshing different way of writing what you can also work to your benefit not everyone likes flowery over-the-top writing so meaning I think anyone is capable of it like your background is never going to preclude you from becoming a writer that's what I want to say but can anyone literally anyone become a writer and get a book published no just because more people want to write than actually write more people want to write than complete projects most people give up its what I'm meaning to say and also there's just not enough room particularly let's say traditional publishing there's simply not enough room that's why there's gatekeepers so no it's not anyone can do it anyone could certainly self publish and put in the work to become successful but luck and timing are a part of it so like yes and no um meaning I'm not pie-in-the-sky enough to say anyone can be a writer it's not strictly true but your brat I don't think background precludes someone from working hard and being talented and improving their skills writing as a muscle you can develop it so yeah both is it good or bad to subvert expectations and novels betting trips etc both it's good because tropes tropes upper left for a reason and they can become boring and you should be trying to do something a little bit different with tropes that's how you when I say that no ideas original this is what I mean ideas are a dime a dozen execution is what matters so it's taking tropes and like doing interesting things with them where it can be bad you need to know your genre really really well and you need to understand why people love things and why people love tropes and there are certain things you don't subverts unless you want to alienate the entire audience so for example in romance don't get rid of that happily-ever-after romance fans will hate you and also it's no longer a romance it's kind of understanding kind of the history and mechanics of something and why people love it and not subverting the thing that makes people like it that's the best way to put it yes I think fanfics amazing for frankly anyone but particularly for young people absolutely I'm biased of course cuz this I come for fan fiction fan fiction was a really safe space for me in which to explore story tropes character archetypes romance let me know it's all about it's all about shipping right in a safe space with a community who wanted to read that material you've built an audience because fans want to read fandom fanfic and it's like safe to fail in those spaces also because you rarely fail because people are pretty happy to read almost anything um and it's also a safe space because you're not publishing or not technically publishing so you're not gonna end up being like 30 years old and go why did I self publish that when I was 16 and be embarrassed it's nice it tends to disappear into the back ends of the internet which is really really nice um yeah and generally I don't think anyone should have to spend money to refine their writing skills I really prickle at people who take advantage of young I'm not just young but just desperate writers who were they like bambbles an amount of money money is money writing is 100% a skill that you can develop without any any funds I don't think that improving writing getting good at writing and publishing selling books should be the domain of people with money well they do have any advantages and are pretty deeply entrenched I I really prickle up that idea so yeah it's definitely reason Finn Thicke is amazing it's it's a training ground for writers for a reason this one might be hard to answer but I'm gonna try how do you create conflicts and subplots that make the story interesting when what the story is actually about itself can't always move the story forward at a time this is why you need romance subplots basically just have to be romance but we're not just a very good one because Romans can technically stand still your characters might not go anywhere you might not be able to progress your a plot which is gonna be main plot but you can add all sort of micro conflicts into a B plot usually it be plateaus in romance but it could be a friend it could be there also two little conflicts you can insert so insert interpersonal character related conflict if you can't literally move the plot forward I'm also gonna warn you though ultimately in the end of the day some readers will not like that it's not as fast-paced as they would liked like but there's all kinds of novels and they just have to deal with it but I'm a fan of character drama so that that's why I'm cool with it house lush win did you know that you wanted to be a writer cliche writer answer always JK JK but not really I think most of us knew a long time ago it's a very cliche answer oh I've always wanted to be a writer but I think it changes so in fairness my mother's job she was an editor like b2b business the business she did trade stuff but meeting a group in a household was someone who worked in an adjacent industry who always encouraged me to write my grandfather also kind of did added editorial type stuff and so I was encouraged so it's like in front of my face but that's the thing I wanted to be a journalist I didn't know I wanted to be an ama yes until I was like 26 so meaning I always wanted to be a writer but I was stuck on journalism for a really long time and I figured that out in high school technically before that I was kind of like what do I want to do do I want to be a doctor that was an interesting period and kind of wish I had but um I landed on journalism when I was 15 or 16 and what I liked about it was it was a very practical way to turn writing into a job though I feel things about that and I felt it suited my writing style just very kind of I'm not flowery um so I guess technically I wanted I knew I wanted to be a professional writer since I was a teenager but I didn't know I wanted to be a novelist I was like 26 years old I was writing the whole time like I used to write baby-sitters Club books when I was like 8 so we all do it we all do that early kind of fanfic that we don't know is fanfic I also try to answer this one approach to building character interactions without a feeling contrived especially the novels and to plot heavy nessing's how thin is the line between necessary filler and just plain Feller so you shouldn't have filler every conversation and interaction should feeds the plot I know that's hard and if you don't have enough plot anymore plot I think about B plots think about subplots conflicts little interpersonal conflicts meaning every conversation should have a goal of what it's doing and it should somehow connect to other parts of the book so for example in the Ivy's Iowa thriller if I have my girls having a conversation the things that I actually had to do this in my revision I was like I need them to talk what the heck are they going to talk about it couldn't be just filler especially cuz it's an act - it actually has to be important I was like okay well what can they talk about and I thought about topics that would both be realistic topics that teen girls who are friends would talk about but that it would also in help my people and I wrote out a list of potential topics they could maybe organically talk about that would enable me to have them talk about things related to college admissions parental pressures specific other characters in the story etc so it it shouldn't be filler um every conversation in a novel should have a goal not in real life that's not how real life works but in a novel every single scene has to have a point and it's hard and you might not always get it in your first draft but it's something to work on in editing for sure especially in a thriller I mean in fairness it's very much a genre thing I have not read ninth house yet I'm pretty deeply entrenched in the dull Affairs the biggest Alliance like when I get on a genre kick I it's really hard to get out of it oh I'm worried hi I love you you're so great we need to write it God although now we can't leave our house so anyway um I love uh Murray you don't follow uh Murray you go follow her Channel she's great she's way smarter than me and reads really smart books um question more on Hawaii adult and adult way crossover I'm definitely gonna do a video on this I've started outlining it but we can talk a bit about it I have so many feelings it's really hard because people are always asking me what is why a like what are these definitions and there are pretty hard and fast definitions and they don't change and I will yell about them I can see a book and tell you that it's not ia but here's the thing that's happened that it's frustrating but it is the way it is so why he basically pushed all lower-weight out of the category so that's the later why a things like Ella Enchanted Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants looks like that cannot be published now is why a I'm hoping it's gonna change though I noticed a couple little things but for at least the last five or six years just now an upper middle grade has really evolved as a category to try to fill that space but I would argue that it's not adequately filling the space left behind by the lack of lower Oia meanwhile a has pushed up and up and up as we all know and we have more and more crossovers and what's interesting about crossovers it's really hard to talk about them to you to give you advice because every single one that has sold and come out it's kind of like even the agents and the writers didn't necessarily know that they could definitely sell this thing they just kind of did their best and sometimes publishing buys them and sometimes publishing doesn't and it really really depends they will say a lot of the people getting away with them are established by authors but there's still some debuts so it's really tricky essentially away across over there edgy er darker older leaning why a to satisfy the core adult readership of yaa and they're really hit or miss to be honest um I can tell you that my friends who work in bookstores say that teenagers don't buy them so they're literal they really do exist for adults and I think this brings up the question of who's by for which is very interesting um gosh it's hard to talk about I haven't cooked it on my thoughts I'm still working on it my outline maybe some more of you will have questions as I scroll through or based on what I've already said but yeah it's kind of like ah yeah it's publishing doesn't quite know what it's doing and that's still figuring it out I think what's gonna be more interesting is whether or not I think adult needs to change is actually what I think I think adult needs to start serving millennial readers more than it has in the past it was so deeply entrenched in serving boomers for such a long time but boomers and Millennials have very different reading tastes partly informed by the rise of yaa and I think we're gonna see more and more of the adult just adult changing and then that'll trickle to impact yaa I think we're gonna see five to ten years of real transition in terms of marketing categories and books for better or for worse who have you told your pen name book titles to is it a secret are you pretty open I'm super open honestly the only reason I have division is that it well it made it easier a little easier to divide I don't keep it a secret it makes Google easier it's a easier name to spell but yeah I don't keep it a secret at all not every one of my personal life knows good they just don't pay attention I almost never self promo on my facebook page because I hate it's all per mo like that I like my personal Facebook page I don't have an author Facebook page uh yeah I don't really keep a secret I have fun story about this though really funny and it's possible the person involved is watching which I would be tickled I got a text last night from my cousin's wife who was a teacher and she said one of my students loved your books and would love something science I said of course I'm gonna send her something and she text me again this morning and said oh she said oh my student sent me this like finding out like how Hurston figured out that her teacher knew me her mom is a fan of this channel hello Elizabeth watch and she watched my pen name video and she heard me say oh I have a long Italian last name and my high school principal used to call me DiGiorno on a announcements and it was really embarrassing and she thought I wonder if her name is insert name the same as my child's teacher it's a long Italian last name and so they asked if she was related to me and she is so I thought that was hilarious that go figure that her daughter's teacher is my cousin's wife so I thought that was really really funny of all the Italian names so yeah that was really amusing to me so I don't keep it a secret but I'm obviously not like telling all of you my name's I don't only just because it's a little bit easier cuz I do her professional life under my name but I'm not I'm not hiding it yeah oh oh babies okay any advice for people who are gonna get rejected from all their reach it reaches okay yeah um it's I'm not gonna lie to you um you're gonna nurse that bitterness forever I mean maybe actually maybe you won't if you're a better person than I am it's gonna hurt it's gonna hurt in the moment and then it's gonna hurt I'm 36 years old I'm still a little bitter about a few of my reaches who rejected me and it's worse now um in the moment process the feelings have a support system maybe even talk to your parents or friends ahead of time like tell them like after something happens like don't remind me all the time about it say like on the that you get the that's not a letter anymore I'm sold on the day that you get the email like say to your nearest and dearest friends or parents or what have you that you need to do some course we're in quarantine you need to do something really fun and distracting as my point assets can't leave your house because of coronavirus watch a favorite movie order pizza if that's still happening so just kind of surround yourself with with goodness and happiness and distractions and then take a deep breath hopefully you've got into some of your matches / safeties and so you it's good to have something good to look forward to because at the same time you're receiving rejections you're hopefully receiving acceptances and it's about focusing on your attentions on the place that you can go or are going to because it's gonna have great things about it and then you get to be better and have a chip on your shoulder forever about the reaches that rejected you and you'll hold that close to your heart and it will keep you warm I still throw shade at the schools that rejected me I'm 36 years old so their loss I don't want to go into debt for them anyway oh here's a cat this is Teddy girl hide the question so you see my cat yes he's like what are you doing right now he's so confused anyway oh right what's next here's a nice meta question how I'm gonna take you on YouTube to start really picking up subscribers a long time YouTube is so weird it takes forever to get to certain milestones and then no time at all to bust past them but only if YouTube decides that it likes you and their favor varies I am currently not in favor with the YouTube algorithm I can always tell when they're pushing certain videos of mine because I get more comments on them and my subscribers go faster I'm currently in a lull period where YouTube is not pushing my videos but they were in like January I know is dull so it took me I could look at the actual stats but I think it took me 10 or 11 months to get to a thousand subscribers yeah this is like literally three weeks before they changed the rules about monetization and they changed them like I had just gotten monetization anyway but then they changed them and I would have qualified thankfully so I just so and they changed monetization rules in February of 2018 so I must have hit a thousand a few weeks before that and I started my channel in June 2017 and then I was kind of like decent stead growth I think I hit I have looked this up at one point I think I was at about 8,000 subscribers when I posted my harsh writing advice video and that is the video that totally changed for me because it was the first video when it was in the first video YouTube really liked my amateur rating mistakes video they promoted that one a lot they don't anymore they YouTube algorithm last onto my harsh writing advice video in September of 2018 and I had about 8,000 subscribers and the only way that I got to 8,000 subscribers by the way in May of 2018 when my book came out Kat and Christine and Jesse shouted me on on their channels specifically Christine and Kat shouted me out outside of publisher promo and I saw a huge uptick when they talked about me in their videos that was actually the first big push for my growth in that spring time so it was like that point between like 1,000 and like 5,000 like the jump up was definitely them so then my harsh writing advice video you two just liked it and between September and December of 2018 I think I got to 20,000 the square is a YouTube giveth and YouTube taketh away but they they treated me pretty nicely I was I think I was at before this fall I think I was under 30,000 I think I was at like between 25 and 30 thousand maybe no I'm saving a thirty thousand and then I posted the do a genre video and again they just happened to like that video and now I'm at sixty two thousand sixty three I'm at sixty two thousand but it slowed down again so it's like dribs and drabs of when youtube likes my videos it's I will say if you're watching this and you're not subscribed subscribe because most people who watch my videos don't subscribe and like you could subscribe if you want that'd be fun cuz like my normal videos that YouTube hasn't latch on to get a very normal amount of views like my subscribers watch them but it's a very rare video that YouTube itself decides to promote growth isn't weird how do you get over impostor syndrome when posting writing advice assuming that's the thing you deal with I do um but less so now than before I honestly was very strategic I purposefully did not start this channel a really good writing advice until I knew that I had a leg to stand on this is my personal choice mostly just cuz my advice heroes were susan dennard and Beth Revis and they were so far ahead of me in terms of like their success they had like proven their success and so I decided for myself definitely want to make sure I had a really good agent and definitely wanted to make sure I had a book deal before I started posting advice in earnest and with brightly burning it was before I had sold it that I started posting a lot pad but I was so close I was confident that I was gonna sell the book and then what I just didn't I wasn't getting engagement that I wanted and so I started this channel a month after I got my book deal so I we did and that helps a lot with the impostor syndrome on the publishing advice side because I knew that I had I had something to talk about I've been doing this I've been in trying to be published since 2011 that's a lot of years of research that's a lot of years of contests and like talking to people and being on publishing Twitter and then also my social networks have exponentially expanded over the years and even since I started this channel and so what helps me with impostor syndrome again with publishing advice is I don't talk about things that I'm not pretty confident about and part of what helps me be confident I ask people questions all the time so before I talk about a topic to you guys I'll talk to five of my friends so we're gonna have different experiences than I do just because they're different people with different books and different agents and all sanity check my snowflake I'm crazy that this is a thing we're like how is this for you so like I've lost my editor and a publishing house but my experience is very different from other friends whose editors who have left so I talked to people and I got a variety of experiences before I decide to talk about a topic and so it's like this like comment like am algún bad bad at words it's a combination of everyone's experiences it's also a way I can give examples that I anonymize I'm not saying people's names like spelling people's information that helps me on that side craft I have experienced so much impostor syndrome on craft videos I still do um because I don't consider craft my strong suit um I'm think I'm a decent writer like genuinely I'm not being falsely humble I'm okay I don't think I'm a great master of writing of language of words I'm okay at some things and I'll talk more confidently about the things I think are my strengths I actually talk decently confidently about my weaknesses because I've had to try to fix them I talk about that but there are some things I feel really really insecure about talking about and so some of those topics I've literally just not made videos you guys were requests and I'm like really you don't want me to talk about that yeah yeah there's a reason I haven't made a video about endings yet I've done a video on beginnings I've done a video in middles and I haven't done one on endings cuz I don't think I've yet mastered how to write a good ending maybe on the IV's I'll finally get good at it but I don't think they're my strong suit and if you've read my books you might agree with me um some people definitely agree mmm I know what good ending when I see it but can I act cute when we'll say so meaning ah this is the kind of stuff I struggle with there are certain topics or I'm just like I am I anxiety will eat me alive if I film edit and post certain types of video so I just don't post them because I yeah some sometimes mean comments her I mean it's sad oh uh so yeah yes I do deal with it and sometimes it's like don't post it other times I will do supplemental research so that I feel a little bit more secure in the topic I'm talking about and then I'll still mess it up I made some mistakes in my passive voice video and I was like screw you I'm not gonna make videos anymore I still do but not on stuff I hate like I am not the person to make any video about grammar I have excellent grammar I think but I can't teach any of it because I don't know what things are called I'm terrible at explaining things yeah maybe if I had like an English degree I'd be better at it but I'm not just throw this up briefly I know right it's a popular trope in science fiction it's something that's always fascinated me and actually living it really really sucks yeah take care of yourselves everyone and also to stall thank you I love to hear that oh just in case you joined late this question I actually recommend you query I cut for this a little earlier depending on the book if your book is really dark and won't be a good escape read it might not be a good time but honestly a lot of agents are actually reading their queries right now so I actually think it might be a good time to query they also can't go to any events usually the spring season is tough because agents are traveling and now they they can't so they have to read something right all right this is a good man where do you even start looking for an agent I do a video on this that you can watch it's a little old so I might be a little stiff so maybe I need to make a new one but generally how do you find any good start with the books that you like that are similar to your book if you have them on the Shelf look at them otherwise maybe you don't want to go to a book store right now awkward but no I've literally just gone to book stores pick books off the shelf that I felt were similar to mine this was years ago and looked at the acknowledgments at the back of every book writers authors write acknowledgments and 95% of the time they're going to thank their literary agent they don't it's a little weird to be yes they usually do and if not you can also google literary agent author name and it will usually come up or you can look at the deal announcements if you have Publishers Weekly which is actually not Publishers Weekly publishers marketplace if you're really in a pinch you can pay for a tool called publishers marketplace I don't recommend it as a first protocol because it's expensive I do have it but I never had it before I queried but point is look in the back of book see whose agents they think and then look them up on Google that's one way another way there's a website called manuscript wish list that has agents and also some editors but mostly agents and what they're looking for in books you can browse that always double check the agents you do find on there you have to do your due diligence and research to make sure they're actually good agents I do have multiple videos on what makes a good agent versus bad / mediocre agent / mages I have so many videos on that because this is the topic I will talk about till I die until you guys listen to me so that's a good one for you to watch because that'll help you weed out people who maybe aren't good agents cuz anyone can call themselves an agent um Twitter is another good place there are a lot of popular HS on twitter so you can look up your some of your favorite authors and then see who their agents are and follow them on twitter you can follow contests on Twitter's things like DB Pitt or pip mad and like see some of the agent names that come up again do your research there's some very shady agents who are prolific on Twitter um those are some of my best suggestions to start favorite book boyfriend um I'm sure I have multiple but I'm just gonna be really lame and say Darcy why not it's a classic for a reason although I guess in the Austen canon I think Wentworth is probably the most stable Austin dude but to that end he kind of lacks personality which I discovered like it's comforting and lovely and he's great for an but when you think about it Darcy's the most dynamic also rich yeah here I'll give you an interesting answer in this one how do you get the right agent you do the best you can and hope you get lucky this is this is both probably gonna ratchet up your anxiety but also hopefully make you feel better there's only so much research you can do ahead of time there's only so much you can know about agents before you query them and there's definitely only so much you can know before you talk to them on the phone if they offer to you and then before you work with them do the best you can try to rule out bad agents for sure don't even query them don't waste your time don't do it please I beg you don't do it then if you get an offer if an agent is interested in working with you just have a phone call going with an open mind try not to be too nervous yourself hopefully they're not too nervous sometimes that first conversation isn't perfect because believe it or not agents get nervous to you on the phone but keep it open mind do your best talk to clients when you have an offer like talk to people about what it's like working with the agent both current clients who have sold who haven't sold and if you can clients who have left that agent that's a tricky one but some people do that I'll admit I didn't talk to any clients when I sign with my agent I love jumping off cliffs but also because I was not gonna bother cure cast it was the only client I could really talk to you at the time my agent has such a slow list it's like not gonna bother her so that's the thing um I had a pretty good sense of my age of a four sign with her and then I really got a good sense of my agent once started working with her and I was like oh my god she's perfect and I adore her sometimes when you start working with an agent you don't have that you go oh no we're not actually a fit and XYZ ways and you can't know it ahead of time and it's not your fault it's not their fault and it's totally okay to leave an agent and once you've had an agent you'll know what you want in an agent and you'll also have a much better sense of figuring out what agents are actually like but also you'll make more publishing friends and you'll have more people you can talk to about what agents are like so it's a double-edged sword because there's only so much you can do ahead of time before getting an agent so do your research but also take a deep breath you can't you can't predict everything or plan everything so I have a video on this I for the time being no I have no plans on becoming a full-time author when I consider it for making millions of dollars yes the odds of that are just so slim to none um I'd go over it in the video but I live in a high cost of living place I also have extreme anxiety about money instability it's because of the way I grew up and so I would have so much anxiety and stress about how to pay my rent and health insurance because I live here us know that it would ruin all of my creative energy and I probably would be incapable of writing books and then I end up hating writing and be miserable and burn out I'd rather have my day job and be able to have all my headspace clear to write so currently this balance that I have of having a good day job with a salary and health insurance is really working for me so if I make millions of dollars yes I will consider becoming a full-time author I also really hope the United States fixes its health care cuz that's the real barrier to entry from each spoke yeah if I lived in the UK yeah I'd be a full-time author when do you give up on traditionally publishing the book that's just similar to the early question about when do you give up on querying it depends I am a dancer I said it could be 50 agents it could be 75 agents it could be 100 it could be time could be a year it could be you're in half could be cheers I think it's always dependent on what you have up your sleeve very often giving up on traditionally providing a specific book is because you have a new book that you want to focus on which is why it's always good to work on something else because if not having something work out always feels terrible but nothing is better for failure in quote marks than having something else to focus on hope is what gets you through so I'd say definitely if the overwhelming message that if you're new I don't have coronavirus I just have a deviated septum and a constantly runny nose if you've just gotten really overwhelming consistent feedback including just Pharm reductions nose across the board and traditional publishing is basically telling you no and you know that the agents are good and you know that they're appropriate for your book if you're getting form rejections and you're not even getting requests it might not even be specifically that your book is wrong for the market it might be the book itself and it's more a matter of going and the rating and the editing to fix that problem then giving up on traditionally publishing it then you might have to if it's just not there yet there's so many things that go into it and the long story short is that I think it's almost always best to just write another book and try again because I will say I know that this is definitely only my personal opinion and that I am more hardline than some people are but a lot of the time not always a lot of the time if traditional publishing of all the gatekeepers are telling you know the book probably shouldn't be published at all so it's a matter of moving on to a new book to try to traditionally publish it not always sometimes traditional publishing is not open to a sub-genre and yes it's a good idea to self publish it but a lot of the time I know that I'm gonna shut up because I know a lot of people disagree with me but it depends on your goals as I've said my goal was to do to be traditionally published so I throw a two books even though I loved them and I still kind of love them but I look at them now and I'm like I know why these didn't work and I improved so much each time I wrote a book and it got me to where I am and I have no regrets but it definitely buries it can never hurt to read a new book you're you you should always improve when you write a new book and that's always good I wonder how far behind and all these questions I am so far behind I'll enter this one quickly guys love talking about my agent I adore my agent she's amazing so we are four years into our relationship I sign with her around this time in 2016 and we've sold three books together I mean really to two book deals with three books so we've gone through a lot together we've gone through a lot of rejection together cuz my first book didn't sell right away we had to rewrite it so we've gone through editorial on books together I've gone through her having a baby there was a maternity leave in there which was great the head of the agency covered me during maternity leave and was amazed to work with actually my agent only took like six weeks because she's a hero um but that's the thing we've been through a lot I've had issues not selling I've had issues with editors nothing crazy but still like my agent is always gonna go in there and protect me um she's earned my trust and I hope I've earned hers I hope she doesn't think I'm crazy I worry sometimes um and so we just have a really good relationship it's um we're friendly we're friends ish but she is my literary age and it's a business relationship I'm wary of a business relationship getting too entrenched it's like a friendship because the the line can get blurred we're definitely colleagues in a sense because I'm a very hands-on author not all are but she knows I'm crazy and she really respects that about me or at least it deals with it meaning I like to know everything as I mentioned she looks up numbers on books can we talk about trends we discussed the market because I really really enjoy that um so we're definitely business colleagues it's a it's a business relationship but we I think we like each other we're pretty friendly and we've been on texting terms per year and a half I text my agent sometimes every day we go back and forth we talk about industry stuff sometimes it's personal so I really love her she's great and what's nice is that like I I'm comfortable enough that I can be like my most neurotic self with her cuz I can be my most neurotic self with her so that my editor doesn't have to see that and I don't embarrass myself and I like that so ah the questions jumped again I keep missing them and only it there's so many I'm glad you're asking questions I definitely dismissed them it's fine we're gonna do more of these honestly as long as I'm quarantine well now I know how stream yard works but maybe all the students every doesn't it'll be the weekend because now I'm working from home this is so depressing I'll do more of these okay questions questions sorry it's not entertaining seeing me scroll well you guys are talking to each other and I adore it sorry I know this is really really boring oh here I'll do this one while I keep looking any tips for making the waiting period after creating less awful this is just like submission and sometimes you can't do anything so first of all I tell you that you should write another book but I'm also going to tell you that I usually can't when I'm on submission and when I was querying I was really working on other books cuz you it's too hard your brain does kind of get stuck on that thing um watch TV like marathon a show that's like really good for you sometimes it can be one you've already seen cuz you already know the emotional response that's gonna trigger and it's the emotional response that you want go out with friends leave the house you can't right now so usually my advice um it's all about distraction techniques and then just literally not so much the waiting period but when you do get responses send out more queries like focusing on positive things helps a lot but the actual waiting read them maybe um you just gotta fill the time and if you're better than me do write a new project that's actually the literal best thing you can do but I'm bad at it so yeah it's hypocritical for me to give that advice but yeah it's still the best advice hmm alright author two recommendations I do have some so Liz else ambery is also being traditionally published and has some really good videos kind of covering that space hold on I'm gonna go to my sub box and throw out some names I like watching shaylen writes um I like Laura writes what's her chant like I know that's her channel name yeah just look up Laura writes I really like her vlogs I of course watch Lainey my friend Lainey crest I watch cat when cat does writing blogs I really really liked those I know that the content isn't quite as often another new channel also true hybrid publishing actually which is good Rachael Bateman look her up she just started but she's throwing out some really good topics I really like her oh I love Courtney what's her actual channel name Sam in my lake sub box Oh Bethany at is it Zeta i watch her um let's see home on I watched Natalya Lee Kate of course Kate Kavanagh uh not all of these are my styles so if you're looking for channels that are exactly like mine definitely look at Rachel Bateman and definitely look at Liz lele's ambery because they're doing similar format Oh Rebecca McLaughlin is another traditionally published author doing similar videos but I like to watch not just that kind of content I also like to watch blogs and stuff so I watched the cake a vinod whatnot um let's see still in May and then honestly I watched so much booktube oh the courtney project that's what her channel is called really good I'm learning so much about self publishing which I just like to watch videos that are things that I don't necessarily already know um still going through it's really boring you guys have to watch me scroll through things you're like what is wrong with her it's also very odd talking to myself and I bet you all my neighbors think I'm crazy so much book too and beauty Tube I've also recently started watching one's for grocery feasts which is just people being interviewed while eating hot wings it's kind of great oh not writing but don't you love how like people ask you something and it's like your entire brain goes by oh by the brook I also like by the Brooks channel there's more obviously but like those are ones I'm throwing out there um let's see keeps growing I love that you guys are having conversations here's a brief question that I can do should you wait to see how naging goes before curing them like someone who's young and new it's up to you yes and no sometimes you have no choice because you're querying right now and it's just hedging your bets and so in that case it's about looking at the agency that they're at and who's training them and if the agency is good and the agency has good sales and their mentor is good and their mentor has good sales I think it's worth taking a chance on the new agent but the other strategy can be just keeping an eye like well like this is good to do when you start writing your project as you're writing keep an eye on that new agent cuz typically it's the two year mark when you can you can really tell how good a new agent is gonna be and so sometimes you do want to watch and let their other clients be guinea pigs to see if they're gonna start selling it's totally up to you and it's about timing but sometimes you can't wait and you just have to kind of go for it here should one start by querying their dream agent first or should they do it in their second round what if you get an offer of representation before the second round I was I'm hoping and a mmnt with this right now and I was like okay this is complicated so yes and no you do want to make sure that your query is very good you want to make sure that your book is in its best possible state you want to do a test batch for your query and your book mostly your query that test batch shouldn't necessarily have your dream agent in it but it should have a couple of fast restore fast responders who are still very good agents again don't query bad agents and then it's a dance you send out your first couple of queries I say three four maybe even five and you see if you get a partial or full request from those fast responders or rejections if statistically most of them are rejections something is wrong without a your query or your pages you look at them but if you get requests partials and foals if you are really confident in your manuscript I honestly say query your dream agent in round two you can wait for round three so this is by the point you're going to need to maybe 10 or 12 13 14 15 agents if you've started to hear back from other people and then because you know your query works and you know that your material works upgrading parses two foals that kind of things those kinds of signs are rate you're looking for because very often dream agents are more popular they're more entrenched they often are those longer responders they're not the fast responders not always and it's a matter of getting into their query queue because what you don't want to do it's a dance it's all a dance the second you get interest from someone real interest I'm talking like you think they want to have a phone call with you which is either you can watch the Twitter sometimes they'll tweet about you that happened to me sometimes they email you and say I'm really loving this hoping to finish it soon or they'll even literally email you and say I want to have a phone call your meter doesn't start running until you actually are on the call and they offer to you and from that point you have an offer and it is bad form to query more agents but in that time where they might want to make an offer is when you send off all your last queries and if you haven't carried your dream agent yet you need to do it right then it's still not gonna be great if 48 hours later you go I have an offer it's not gonna look good but it's better than querying going I actually have an offer for this or querying and waiting 24 hours that's bad form it's a dance it's all the dance and this is assuming you get that early interest of course but that is how I approached it a couple of my dream agents I did in second round because I knew my query worked already and I knew they took forever to respond and I knew that they went chronologically through their inbox this is all getting career trackerpro and paying attention to trends and I basically wanted to be in their queue knowing that because they took forever that even if I had to revise my book I could probably revise my book faster than they would get to my query isn't that terrible so it's all strategic and it depends on how your dream agent is that's the like kind of long complicated answer I think I could answer this one quickly do you have experience the stories went right are so sold their foreign rights and how it works I can tell you it works in trad pub I've only sold to the UK it is fine dream to sell in a foreign territory to books in a row sci-fi doesn't do well in the foreign market and I'm really crossing my fingers for the Ivy's I want Edition in another language I really want a book in German so desperately I speak it I wanted it I wanted the Stars of Steel in German Leonie is literally German but I digress there's German in the book and I hope it's not wrong um how it works this depends on your agent and your agency and you can do your research on this before you sign some agencies are better at foreign rights than others some handle it in-house and some outsource well I mean technically they all outsource but what I mean is the way works so the percentage is for domestic rates is always going to be 15% so let's say you're based in the US or Canada or whatever they're gonna make 15% on your first territory of sales so I'm a friend of lives in South Africa and his book sold in the US so his agent gets 15% on that not more just cuz my friend lives in South Africa they have 15% on that that's the entire commission then they keep it for foreign rights there's another agent who handles submitting your book in different markets there's usually someone at the agency if not your own agent some agents do the foreign rights for their agency and take their own clients but basically they work with Co agents in other countries these so these are literary agents in other countries who know that local market really really well and they partner with us agencies to do all of their separates and vice versa so if that UK agent has a book that sells the agent in the US office so let's my agency's lauderdale and their co agent in the UK is um Vince I am so so sheís I should know this my co agents name is Laura Laura in the UK let's say Laura sold a book in the UK market she would contact my not my agent but an agent at Laura Dale for shopping it in the u.s. they would have like a in kind relationship I'm pretty sure I could be wrong about this I should probably talk about the way I know it works the other way Co agents in other countries so Sam at Laura Dale has contacts in the UK Germany all these different markets and those Co agents are the ones who submit your book not your u.s. agent your US agent sends them materials and then they do their own package in their own language and submit it to publishers then if those publishers want to buy the book it's like a game of telephone the publisher deals at the co agent the co agent then talks to the US agency and if it's if the US agency person isn't your agent they talk to your agent and it's a nice game of telephone but how things sell and then foreign rights percentages are twenty twenty-five or thirty percent depending on how many co agents are involved because each co agent involved gets a cut of the book so that's more or less how it works and then there are also foreign book sales sales conventions like Bologna just got postponed that's always in the spring and in Italy it might get outright cancelled to be honest and then Frankfurt it always happens in the fall in Germany and that's when buyers agents and publishers and buyers from around the world all come to this convention for the sole purpose of acquiring books from different countries so some agencies physically send an agent there I believe Laura Dale does my agency the bigger they even see the more likely it is they have a person who goes to those conferences or the bigger the agent but sometimes they just send a catalogue with a co agent so your book will be in the foreign rights catalog and that's more or less how it works so I'll answer half of this question I don't really know cheap publishers editors or illustrators if buy cheap I mean that's man it'd be publishing which is not my area of expertise generally you shouldn't not Manatee publish editors and illustrators I don't know as much about that self-publishing peeps might but free or free online classes to improve writing welcome to YouTube honestly this is your best free resource for writing tools but there are some non audio-visual options as well susan dennard has an excellent newsletter I hope that archives are posted somewhere you can definitely subscribe going forward she has very very good craft stuff written down my friend Rosie runs be your own mentor which is a blog that has again a ton of writing and craft resources those are some of my good recommendations all free I honestly think that most things should be free I can't answer this already but still I'm already a deadline for my book I'm so I'm gonna finish my book and then honestly after I finished my book I'm not gonna write I'm gonna need at least a two week before week break so even if quarantine rages on I'll just watch a lot of television to be honest this is hard good tips on writing good scene transitions am I good at writing scene transitions I don't know this is where I would read find authors who do them really really well and see how they do it um that's kind of what I do and sometimes if you really can't manage it scene break honestly you just to see break oh how many hours do you spend a day writing not as much as you think when I'm actively drafting an hour maybe two on the weekends it might be three or four but I'm I must slow and steady writer so alright 800 to 1200 words a day that said um if it's an hour if I'm only writing an hour it's a productive hour which would be a thousand or more words or it could be a not productive hour which might be 400 to 500 words and I just kind of roll with it there are people who write a lot more but especially because I'm not full-time I have a day job and a YouTube channel and and a social life I don't actually rate that much per day and I don't write all the time so I only write when I'm actively writing I'll go long stretches where I'm not working on a book but when I'm working on a book I write every single day about an hour a day this is a hilarious question I'm just I don't outline I'm terrible at it outlining methods people swear by save the cat so let's be cheat and the cat caddy tastic cat has a 27 beeps outlining thing and I Frances swear by it so look that up there people who like the snowflake method um I'm the worst person to ask about outlining or if you want to be like weird you can outline your book backwards and I video on that so I'm a terrible honestly let's see this is a as a turret question why do you write what do you enjoy about it um I think so often the books that we write it's the stories that we want to see written cuz we want to read them I write to tell myself the story and that's why I find myself writing things that other people haven't written and it's like well I hope someone else enjoys this as well that's that's mostly it it's like how like I'll have like a high concept idea that's like how how do I execute this so I ever I personally write to write the high-octane emotional moments that like I want to read personally I want to catch up yeah talk about friends in the industry how do you meet these friends and get to know so many people in the industry so for starters seriously this is an option to you volunteering with Dragon Claw was huge and before I volunteered with Dragon Con on the young adult literature track I worked on Harry Potter conventions so it's just been fan of stuff like I started you know fandom Harry Potter and then a Harry Potter friend was like I'm volunteering at Dragon Con and we need someone you want to join the staff I was like sure cuz I love organizing and stuff like that that was the first way that I started meeting people so I'd be moderating panels and the authors would be on the panels so that's why I was an early fan of like susan dennard and Beth Revis because they came to Dragon Con and I just thought they were the most fabulous people like I was charmed by them on their panels their books sounded super cool I mean I'm at surgery Mass in 2012 as well where she was huge but like fangirl wise I'm a huge Susan and Beth fan more than Sarah which is not no-knock I just have preferred their books I've read Sarah's as well of course but like I loved them and they were so friendly on and off the panels and I see them every year and it would become like alright um I was working on a novel at that point so it'd be asking them for like advice and just just being friendly authors are really a lot of them are really nice so that was the big way to start developing that at work and every once in a while there'd be someone I'd meet usually a fellow a volunteer person not necessarily already published author and we would just hit it off and we would become friends a new Star Trek chatting and link you start to slowly build those Twitter uh I've talked about it before on the slide into DM sometimes be like you seem cool we should be friends I mean that doesn't always work by the way and don't do that to like its levels I do that to people on my level but we came up together so I came up through publishing with people that I met on blogs and Twitter and reddit and we became critique partners then when I got an agent I joined an agent hood author group and I made a really good friend through that and then when I a book deal I joined a debut group so you just you kind of as you go through the different level as you're meeting different people but events was the her first huge one like I'm not BFF Swiss Susan but we're friendly and anytime I see her we talk and I know I could always ask her for advice I have asked her for advice through the years just like setting her questions and she's really nice and she answers them and like that's helped me kind of learn things and learn what's normal and set expectations in the early days and even if you don't become friends with them just go to their panels you'll hear good stuff but that's kind of how I've done it getting involved first essentially as a reader and a volunteer and then kind of coming along with peers and then through author like author mentor match because I run a mentorship program I'd become friends of the haha there's become mentors I've become friends with the mentees within get agents and like you just kind of you expand your network slowly over time god it's weird to call it a network that sounds so shallow but that really is kind of how how you do it and I mean I like I'm an introvert but I do like making friends I'm very social especially when it's through a computer that makes it easier I love talking about publishing I love normalizing things here's a question I'm not sure I can answer because I don't know if I'm smart enough how do you personally know you keep me out I really appreciate you how do you personally define the difference between thriller in suspense this is a great question thriller is gonna be faster paced more will happen probably usually higher stakes thrillers usually have more murder I think I think suspense doesn't necessarily have to have a killer murder uh suspense could be more psychological in nature a good thriller can also be psychological in nature a suspense can be a slow burn a suspense can pair well with other subgenres um like women's fiction or fantasy kind of maybe the romance I don't know um that's my personal line I think of thrillers being pretty high stakes pretty fast-paced so the one that I'm reading right now is a great example so far it really doesn't feel like a thriller so it's Leslie Cara who did you tell I was reading it last night that's like have I hit the inciting incident yet what is this book about cuz I went in cold and then I got to the end of a chapter and it finally hinted at what the character secret was and I was at 27% that is incredibly late for an inciting incident and so I it's feeling more like a suspense book rather than a thriller I'm not feeling drilled and chilled but I'm feeling a thread of suspense so I think that's kind of my personal line I think but I'm I'm probably wrong who knows how does how does publishing to find it I don't know I think much like why a they call everything thriller cuz it's a good selling point and it's all about marketing so right I've actually caught up with questions I'm I'm amazing okay good um here oh I think it did jump so thank you for asking this if I have completely skipped a question you can react to some of them it might just not be qualified to answer there are a few of us like oh I don't know if I can answer that recommendations for people who want to be hybrid author or should you strive to be traditionally get published first this is an excellent question I can go either way so one of those recommendations I made earlier is a really good person to go to channel to go to if you want to see the other way around I'm of course only ever gonna be able to speak to going traditional it's yourself eventually Rachel Bateman she did self traditional and so it's going to depend honestly 90 percent of the time I think it's better to start traditional only because it's harder to be traditionally published and you can basically if you make it you make your publisher invest their resources in launching you it's just nice it costs less so because I'm a traditional first obviously I built this YouTube channel on my own my publisher didn't do it but they did everything else they sold me in with librarians and teachers and booksellers etc so like they did a lot of hard work that I could have never done myself they got my book up there initially there are thousands of people who have read my book that I have no access to that I didn't have to build you spend the I'm building myself so that's why I did I mean I wanted to do traditional for a lot of reasons but that part is done like now I could theoretically self-published using the same name and have to do a lot less marketing work than the average self publisher so that's made sense for me also just because I've seen some of my idols like Beth Revis that's how they did it they would traditional to yourself and then other people like their couple other authors where I don't know their pen names but I know that they traditional publish and self publish like I'm pretty sure they're self-published off this romance and they have secret pen names like I know they're out there and I'm like you're my role model you just don't know it um but I think it's it's both easier and harder to go traditional itself in the weird way because you do all of the hard work it's suffering before being traditionally published and I think it then makes aspects of self-publishing easier but on the other flip side it can be really smart to self publish in a sub-genre genre that does very very well in self-publishing so it's gonna depend on what you write establish yourself there do really well there and then when you have the right book do it traditionally and then you've already built up your own platform and you also already know how to write a book quickly how to write on deadline self editing etc there are two people I can think of Rachel's one of them who did that very smartly and then there was a woman in my debut group um I know her name hold on she deserves a shout out it's Ashley but I just wanted to double check on our last name I think it's McClelland let's see when I get rich at us you can check out her books this is the test of hold on I think it is Ashley my god you're like Alexa this is so unprofessional I know her book let's see good to do her like wow she's literally scrolling I just want to double check I think it's Ashley McClellan my brain just blanked point is she self-published a ton of books um in urban fantasy which is a space that as incredibly well as self-publishing she's still self-publishing she's doing incredibly well she makes the majority of her income from self-publishing she's not sweating for anything there she hasn't stopped but then she wrote a book that had a trad pub feel it felt right to do trad pub she queried got an agent and traditionally published two books she's still self public but now she's got both sides and both streams so that's that works too but it was for her different genres so she's so she's firmly self-publishing something that does better in self-publishing and then took a thriller and traditionally published that a wife thriller so um it depends you have to really evaluate what you're rating and essentially come up with your five to ten year plan and really think about what is going to work the best I was writing why I sci-fi I knew I needed to be traditionally published first just why a period why a is a lot harder to break out in self-publishing not impossible harder so okay I'll just answer this quickly I'm not a literary writer I'm not pretty enough to be a literary I'm not somatic to be literary um so I will write an adult thriller it's gonna be a soapy and commercial as my why eh it'll just have adults who are married and have problems with husbands and kids and all that kind of fun stuff I have some good ideas I'm pretty pleased about two of them because I love reading adult thrillers they're just my favorite to read here's another quickie I mentioned agented offer groups where do you find them once you have a book deal you will basically ask sometimes on Twitter hey is there a debut group for 20 21 or 20 20 and someone will tell you and send you a link and an invitation and it happens that way what are tropes that I hate oh this is hard it depends on John Rowe there's one I know this this won't make some people happy I really don't like creature fiction I know that's more of kind of like a sub-genre kind of thing but it is kind of a trope meaning I don't like like the the monster love interest kind of thing like I don't hate it I can do it in vampires but I depends on the creature I think is the best way to put it um I don't like well that's like little things like it's not even tropes like I don't like the I'm not like other girls thing I don't like oh my god I'm so ugly except every man in the story thinks I'm beautiful and perfect as someone who's not like thin and gorgeous it gets real annoying when you're like I know you're pretty shut up um I don't like abusive men I did read this isn't my rap video there was a thriller a suspense novel I read in December that just I hated the love injures so much that I docked us I had to take a star off because I was like I was so upset how it normalized in abusive relationship I can't I don't want to like men who get angry and jealous and shout and push you need to die to fire not literally because I don't want to murder anyone but you know what I mean figuratively in fiction um this is just like a thorough specific one nine times out of ten I'm not gonna read like military thrillers FBI thrillers like one sports like a cop FBI agent or a military figure investigating nine times out of ten it just doesn't appeal to me I think I'm just not gonna pick up those books nothing against them it's just like a preference I like to read from like the first-person perspective of like a woman or a dude but like sometimes like more of a normal person but I can do like journalists characters that's fine yes I'm sorry to tell you that um there's just not a market for them more or less famous people can publish novellas in short fiction debuts cannot unless you manage to get yourself an in thought into an anthology but usually can't unless you already know people it's just I mean think about the bookstore think about what you buy there's really no market for it in traditional publishing it needs to be a novel you can write a short novel but not a novella there's like a line there has to be enough conflict to be longer it's just it's never been a market that's been particularly successful in self-publishing sorry traditional publishing I'm it's harder to market those stories so I'll the chat jumped again we can wrap up soon - it's been uh it's in two hours and 20 minutes once no one's gonna want to watch this back here's a good one um it is harder but it is not impossible I mentioned I have a friend in South Africa so he's being published soon I have friends in Australia who's being published soon so obviously the common denominator there they write in English so it's an it's an english-speaking book market so you need to be writing in English I'm just as long as you've got a good story and it's in a language that the agent can understand and so you are fine because then you just have to reach reach the same benchmarks as any other author it has to be good enough it has to be marketable it only gets complicated on the payment side it's mostly au problem meaning your agent is still gonna get paid in the US but then they're gonna do a bank transfer there's gonna be you know kind of the exchange fee like you can get screwed depending on how your currency is doing against the US dollar and then you are gonna have to individually deal with your own taxes some publishers might be kind of iffy if you can't travel because you live really far away it's not a deal breaker if your books good as I mentioned my friend in Australia and my friend in South Africa got book deals I will say something that my friend in South Africa has experienced no problem getting an agent but there was kind of times where it seemed like there were American authors with similar books that run sub at the same time this seemed to have an easier time selling than heated and we suspect that when comparing two authors with similar books that sometimes the publisher will favor an author who is domestically based it's not impossible so you just have to kind of prepare yourself for that it's also definitely harder if your book is not set in the United States just harder not impossible and that's the rule of thumb period like if you got a book set in the UK okay it's really gonna sell in the UK market first rather than the u.s. that just it varies in a contemporary fiction obviously historical or fantasy fiction is a little bit different so what are subjects or genres that editors and agents are looking for right now contemporary and fantasy are evergreen and in both cases well in contemporary specifically cichlid is kind of dead issues books are kind of dying out like they'll always publish them but it's there it's in vogue as it once was rom-coms are coming back for sure and otherwise I think contemporary is still trying to find its next big thing um different I've noticed everyone's just looking for different and in many cases that does include own voices books or books from marginalized perspectives like the fresh nests can come from just it a story being told in a different way contemporary is not my area forty's however because I am more on the genre side I'll tell you like in thrillers that just one high concept they edit errs and agents do on thrillers but they have to be incredibly high concept that it just means commercial and they have to be impeccably written the thriller market is a double-edged sword right now it's been like this for a while um they're selling but it's still really hard to soin I know people in the query trenches and also unsub with thrillers and um I sold faster and more easily than some and I feel almost bad about it right place right time it's just the college scandal exploding was right place right time it was a total coincidence and it really worked out in my favor so meaning you've gotta bring it on commercial appeal and timing and it has to be impeccably written because editors if they're gonna choose between two they're gonna choose the one that's closer to being publishing ready so you have to really like bring it fantasy it just has to be different as I mentioned they're looking for the next big thing in fantasy I personally think it's romance fantasy so if you have one polish it finish it query it I think because a serpent and dove I believe is creating an appetite that is pure speculation on my part I'm different um sci-fi is in a bit of a debt period again but it always cycles back around space sci-fi I actually think there could be some windows of opportunity for more grounded sci-fi realistic sci-fi do I have beta readers who read outside my genre and finally give helpful feedback yes several of my beta readers are more fantasy people but they read thrillers for pleasure or they read sci-fi for pleasure and my subversive I will see P books and genres that I don't write but I read in that area so that's more the thing it's that they read in in that space is more important than what they specifically write sometimes you don't want to CP with people who write exactly what you write sometimes you do but sometimes you don't cuz it can get a little too close you can get a little kind of muddled and you can also get into a weird place where like it's stealing from each other not intentionally but there we hurt feelings definitely like oh I see that you you did a trump that I also did in my book it's like oh I didn't mean to offend that come up there's only so many tropes you can write in genres though so let's go on how much does book length matter and publishing especially when you are a debut author it definitely matters it's for two reasons a two shorter word count indicates that your book isn't complex enough that you haven't worked on it enough and you don't understand the industry too long means that your book has not been properly edited you don't know how to edit you have too much going on and you don't understand the market so that's why too low and too high their red flags basically and what you're fighting against is proving otherwise if it is otherwise the problem is statistically 99.9% of the time agents editors know agents were actually just gonna talk about agents once you pass the agent mark usually you can get away with stuff with editors because that if the editor trusts the agent you can but with agents you have to prove that you are the exception to the rule and that's exceedingly difficult so usually it's better to query this is more for longer it's better to query shorter and then add more even add back in things once you already have representation I already have a book deal because you've already earned their trust you've proven yourself and then you get leeway once you're there so there are books that sell around 100k and they they get edited to 120 K and that's their published what that's a papers expensive their paper shortages right now little bigger books literally take up more shelf space so it is in a publishers best understood published shorter book so just why books tend to be shorter the sweet spot for yaa is 80 K to 120 K max for fantasy cuz that it's about finding literal binding size and what you can do with the paper once you get past that with juggernut like it's just it's it makes less sense money-wise the longer the book is adult fantasy and sci-fi operate a little differently so you can get away with different things plus it's about attention span yeah genre that's considered dead that I want to see revived I just always want Syfy to do better than it's doing premiere on why a prove me wrong and do your job and genre said I want to see less of there's nothing currently that's really bothering me in the past I probably would have said cichlid I was never a really big fan of that not only cuz I didn't read it but a lot of it's severely ablest it's still a problem there's still cichlid that does that um there's nothing I'm egregiously upset with right now as a reader oh and I want more thrillers please I need to read I want more to read in yaa adults doing great away needs to catch up there's been uh how did you decide to leave fan fiction when consump to original fiction writing are there any signs uh yeah for me I was on like year seven or eight of Harry Potter fandom and honestly Harry Potter fandom just kind of tapered off not entirely it still clearly exists but I was part of the Golden Age of Harry Potter fandom and like we all started to notice the fan of fatigue and changes we had a lot of drama a lot of drama which is exhausting but also platform started to change I taper it off at the same time a ton of people did LJ's sold to a Russian company and it got really bad so part of it was a natural decline with the platform's changing and social norms changing for phantom and it just felt like the right time a lot of people were leaving it I also just got older that was the point when I was reaching my mid to late twenties I was like getting my first real job burning out at my first real job looking for new opportunities reading more yaa it was just for me it was the combination of factors remember the way I didn't exist when I was younger so around the time that I've started to just wean myself off Harry Potter fan I'm all the drama and all the stuff and also the seventh book came out and that blog was terrible and there's only so much steam we could subsist on after that book not a fan of Deathly Hallows not a fan that was also around the time Jake hair started being terrible like nah I mean she's worse now but it started started around then started with the epilogue basically where like you start to not trust the person that you've invested so much of your life and um variety of things and I started getting more confident in my writing I started reading more cuz why I started booming around that time like I got into a when why I became a thing started just enjoying more stories because Panem was really obsessive for me to be honest it is for a lot of us and it just felt like the right time I also at that point we had seen Cassie Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan make their transition that was really interesting and attractive and it's just like Oh interesting a lot of us kind of thought about transitioning to original thicker at the same time and for that reason so just a lot of things for me I just started going off my fandom I transitioned specifically from link online LJ fanfic stuff to cons or that time working on cons I still worked on Harry Potter cons until 2016 but it's just just all the right things at the right time for me um you start to lose interest your friends start to move on and you get more busy in a job or another hobby you're reading more you want to write original fiction you start to feel a little held back in fanfic it's something that I noticed too I wrote a lot of a you like I wrote things where I was doing actually a lot of heavy lifting on world building like more than you normally do and man fake and I was like doing all this work this feels like mine but it's not and so you start to have those feelings it's also easier to transition if you write more transformative fanfiction if it's not all in world a you is really good for stretching yourself I wrote crossovers with other fandoms so there's like all of those things all together in Kappa to coincide with me like literally growing up as a human my brain stopped forming and I started being a real adult so it was a lot of things plus all the drama so much drama also the Russians the Russians LJ became a successful [Music] here's on meth drillers the ethics of writing mystery-thriller have you ever considered that you haven't given enough clues or too many clues um that's not some ethics I assume you mean more like structure and like the mechanics oh it's hard I'm still worried that it's too obvious who the killer is in the IDS actually one of my editors edit suggestions is really good for the very reason that it's helping me obscure things a bit better good at it I was but I've always been worried because it's always gonna be more obvious to you because you know the end and so I give it to a lot of readers who haven't read any of it and I check in with them as they read to see what they're guessing and I've made tweaks based on that like in the early reads when people were telling me if they were guessing to correctly I knew which parts of my manuscript I had to work harder on to obscure um the thing with too many clues this is definitely an editing thing I wasn't there on my earlier drafts on this one I'm being very careful I have a running list in a doc of everything I've introduced every clue um so that I have a reminder to wrap it up later because I hate when I read books and they don't wrap up all the clues even just today I was thinking oh don't forget to resolve that thing it's just keeping track of things and you definitely want it to be more complex if you can but it's a lot of work so you kind of have to take in and lick bits and pieces if you think this is again why I don't thoroughly outline these thrillers what I think my brain would explode if you concentrate too much at the beginning on every single thread that you have to read every single clue I think that you'll psych yourself out of writing the book to be honest that's why my kind of plan Singh method is working for me so far I'm doing a lot of work in editing [Music] I'll answer this one quickly just uh I can't speak from the other side I'm a one book at a time person I have to like hyper focus on one thing until it's done or I lose my inspiration if you can juggle do it but I personally have to go full steam ahead on a single thing until it's done oh it's been 2 hours and 30 minutes I need to wrap up I'm gonna try to get through the last of these and then we'll wrap it up and let's do another one of these later might as well do one next weekend maybe it is it's also almost 3 o'clock and I do actually have to revise my book it's a weekend which means I need to get at least 2 to 3 hours of work in I want to do 20 to 30 pages today so here's a quickie traditional publishing one last year my agent went through a very horrible situation I sent my book on hold for sews for months how do you recommend coping like with situation talk to other people talk to fellow clients talk to other friends honestly to gauge what's normal versus what's not normal for to be totally honest obviously bad things can happen but in some cases it is done in your best interest to potentially part ways without agent if it like it's nobody's fault but sometimes like it you shouldn't be punished for months and months or even more than a year if something's happen sometimes that means that the relationship just doesn't work anymore but talk to other people don't suffer through something in a vacuum especially if it turns out what's happening is it normal or there might be a solution that you're not aware of that someone else might come up with so that's my advice for that curious if I never consider going back to writing sci-fi yes I'm currently out of it obviously which honestly the reason well I have a lot of feelings about sci-fi I maybe I'll just do a separate chat about those who talk about them in a chat I don't want to do a formal video because it feels like complaining when I've tried to talk about this like I did try to put this in my sci-fi video I was like you sound like a whiny shut up I've encountered gatekeeping in sci-fi that's pretty upsetting like meaning never feeling good enough you want to talk about a posture syndrome cuz I don't feel good enough honestly I don't come from a traditional sci-fi background I have no science education not really like meaning I've always been an English person but I'm fascinated by science parts of it like natural disasters and genetics and whatnot but I've never felt smart enough to write sci-fi I also don't come from a sci-fi background my mom never liked it I didn't grow up with it so I feel at a disadvantage because I basically missed out on 20 years of sci-fi foundational education that other people really take for granted there's gendered keeping that goes on in sci-fi like some people will just automatically look down on sci-fi sci-fi romance if it has too much romance a lot of sci-fi fans don't want the romance a lot of romance fans don't like this IFI I've experienced that from other authors just feeling like I'm not part of the club like the point is that plus my publisher just flat out saying don't submit another space book for your option my only two ideas for space I still really love them I have both of them decently not outlined because it's me but like I have enough of both of them to write them actually one of them are cuz it is a thriller it's a space thriller I do know enough of it that I could outline it pretty decently and I still like both of them and I still kind of want to write them but the market is not right for either of them so yes I feel that I will come back to sci-fi when it's time to write though either of those two things one is a romance retelling and the other is a thriller so eventually but I don't think I'll ever get over my imposter syndrome for sci-fi I feel like I'm not smart enough and I feel like I'm not I don't have the foundational education obviously I didn't get into I liked light sci-fi as a teen like I liked contact is still one of my favorite movies I love Gattaca but I didn't get into PSG until my 20s because it doesn't exist until my 20s but I know I wasn't a massive star wars fan I didn't grow up watching Star Trek I didn't read all the popular books I've never read Ender's Game and so I just I battle with that constantly and it makes a pretty reservoir and that it's easier to be a better writer I know more about thrillers I have a decent foundational education and thrillers so kiss the girls is one of my favorite movies and books okay movies better let's see I got a scam over some of these cuz oh my gosh it's been two hours and 37 minutes um alright quickies this isn't really quick but how do I create work/life balance so I have the emotional bandwidth to work on your writing it varies widely when my day job marketing has a busy season I can't write and I have to just cross my fingers and hope I don't have a book deadline when that happens so for example q4 is also really also it's always really really busy in my day job and I know this every single year predict it's like clockwork q1 is always light q3 is usually pretty late so q1 and q3 that's a winter spring and summer for both of you but note talking quarters I try to plan my writing around those times q4 is a nightmare it's why I can almost never get through NaNoWriMo and I just have to hope that my publisher doesn't give me a deadline during those quarters and when they do I have to talk to my publisher and like make them understand because when I'm high bandwidth on my day job it does eat up my entire brain it takes all of my emotional bandwidth because I am like so overwhelmed at work and it's a lot of moving pieces so also then I have a marketing job that has off times not every marketing job does and if you have a job that never has off times you need a new job honestly because I find it almost impossible to balance when I am at high bandwidth at the day job because marketing is it's both creative but it takes a lot of your logistical brain that I use on in writing so that's how it is for me quickie I have a video on this search my channel for traditional publishing actually made one in choice 17 and then I rerecorded a new one with me more comfortable in front of the camera like eight weeks ago so I have multiple videos on this watch them for sure yeh I also novelty show also has episodes on this yes I still use the star sticker method but only when drafting which means I haven't used it since last summer when I was drafting I do not use it for revision which is why I get undated planners because I will go very long stretches without using them all right I really have to wrap this up also cuz I need to use the restroom that's your very human update also the chat just jumped again I lost things this is killing me all right hold on I'm just gonna define a closer we're gonna close those of you whose questions I can't answer we're gonna do this again cuz this worked out really well let's say next weekend either Saturday or Sunday it's gonna happen it jumped again this chat hates me it's fine yeah okay we'll do this one quickly and then we'll wrap it up and I'm so sorry if I've missed your question if I could write any kind of novel no book market in mind what genre kind would you go for my go twos are more or less what I wrote thriller in romance 100% what I love the most but I like to read it's what I like to write thriller in romance I would write more or less what I write it I'll tell you obviously not sci-fi but what's worked out for me is that I'm the things that I love the most intense like deep interesting weird characters large cast of characters a lot of interpersonal conflict lottiaunts a lot of drama soapy elements like Rick it's a little high octane those are the things I love to write and I love romance which is evergreen and so I can pivot to the market so I'm fortunate that more or less what I'm writing is what I want to write with some small variations like Oh actually with no urban fantasy with no but that's like you know it's got the world building of the characters and the romance that's what my second book was it was basically I'm you know superpowers um and I loved writing that book like oh like yeah that's it's like a combination like the high octane thrills some thrills some suspense romance with some genre world-building thrown in like that's my all-time favorite so you guys killed it I was so worried no one would show up and I have no questions and I have would have nothing to talk about and it's been almost three hours and this is incredible and I'm a little hot because I've got the light on so it's a lot and my cats are looking at me like what are you doing so thank you so much for joining me let's do this again next weekend sure why not Saturday or Sunday around the same time yeah so thank you so much for joining me and March 28th I'm doing a livestream with other people I'm hosting a bunch of authors let me pull up the list and I'll tell you rose ether Samuel Menon Demetri broadsky Alicia Dow and Jenica Cohen so far are all the people who are definitely going to be joining me and there might be other people as well who I add and throw in the comments like before we go like some things you might want us to talk about I'll take a look and help kind of form I'm gonna do an informal outline but you guys can also send us questions so yay stay safe get toilet paper I guess I wasn't able to yesterday but I did buy a hundred and twenty count bag of pepperoni to Tino's pizza rolls and a gallon Oy scream so I'm doing really really well so stay safe stay healthy watch lots of TV read books definitely read books and write your books if that's your thing I have to revise right now so bye guys thank you so much yay

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 11,960

Rating: 4.9299612 out of 5

Keywords: writing, publishing, writing advice, fanfiction, beta readers, editing a book, writing a book, publishing a book, traditional publishing, self publishing, hybrid publishing, authortube

Id: VZc4exx0R4Q

Length: 163min 30sec (9810 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020