with Amy Bernstein
Amy Berstein has written novels, plays, poems and hybrid forms of fiction that explore the intersection of politics and culture. Some of her work is realistic, some is experimental.
She’s been heavily involved in her local theatrical community and is now a certified non-fiction coach through Author Accelerator.
You can find Amy on her website here. And you can read her blog on Medium here.
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Transcript starts here:
Kat (00:14)
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast.
A weekly podcast for writers.
Grab a cup of coffee, perhaps some.
Paper and pen, and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Cat thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn something. And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say, you have a story. You should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello, writers. I’m Karen Caldwell. Welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. It is June 2, 2022 and it’s raining cats and dogs in Virginia. Before we get into the show, let me remind you to share it with anyone who you know is a writer or likes to listen to interviews with authors and writers and anyone in the publishing business, whatever app you’re using to listen to it, I appreciate you. It’s so much fun to see where you guys are listening from all over the world. Hello, Canada, Hello Australia. Hello Taiwan. Hello Saudi Arabia. Hello Hungary. We’ve had some people from all over the world and it’s so exciting to see that. It would be so helpful if you would share it with other people.
Just let people know that you like the show. If you want to suggest somebody to come on the show or just want to reach me, you can reach me best on social media, on Twitter, at Pencils Lipstick and on Instagram, at Pencils and Lipstick, all spelled out on Instagram.
If you want to support the show. You can support it on Patreon or buy me a coffee. And those links are in the show notes and they’re always super appreciated. I definitely drink enough coffee for probably the entire state of Virginia.
So there’s that just a little heads.
Kat (02:22)
Up as we go into summer. Yay, summer. Although it’s raining, but it’s actually pretty hot. So summer has finally arrived in Virginia. My garden is beautiful and if you don’t know, I have a completely black thumb. So I’m actually surprised that my garden is beautiful. Now all that to say, I haven’t done anything really with it except for plant it and hope that the sun comes. And sometimes I water it like this morning and then it was completely unnecessary because it just downboard. So thankfully, nature is just doing what nature does. We will see. So far, I think I have tons of flowers. We’ll see if they actually become vegetables because last year I had flowers and then they became nothing and I don’t know what happened. So anyway, so far it looks good. Right now the announcement is as we go into June, that July, as usual, I will be heading over to Spain to visit my family over there. Every summer I take my kids so that they can spend time with their grandmother and their Cousins. And so the first part of the show every week will just be a prerecorded heads up.
Kat (03:34)
This is prerecorded. Let’s get into the show.
Kat (03:37)
Pretty much.
Kat (03:38)
I know that I usually talk to you guys about what’s going on in my writing life and whatever I’m seeing in the industry. So I just want to let you know that in July the podcast will look a little bit shorter.
Kat (03:50)
Definitely.
Kat (03:50)
Let me know if you just prefer to hear the interviews and you don’t want to hear me chat. I want to know that if you miss hearing me chat, I want to know that, too. So you can get a hold of me on Twitter at pencil slipstick. That’s probably the best place to just tweet me. And I see it right away. Also, if you love an author and you want them on the show, let me know and I will send them an email and see what they say. So we have some great people coming up. I’m very excited. Today we have Amy Bernstein on the show. We’re going to talk about screen writing and then fiction writing and then nonfiction coaching. She does it all, really. We have Carissa Andrews coming up next week. We have RJ coming up the week after. He writes fantasy. And it’s pretty interesting to hear about his fantasy because it’s all sort of based on his role playing games that he does with his family. So he has all these characters and they’re all fleshed out. And it’s just pretty amazing. And then to round out June, we have CS Laken, and she is just a fountain of knowledge.
Kat (04:57)
You’re not going to want to miss her.
Kat (04:58)
So, of course, as we go through.
Kat (05:03)
The links are always in the Show Notes. And you can always support the show on Patreon. Compencielpstick. You can also buy me a coffee, me and my editor, my amazing editor. And those links are in the Show Notes. But today I want to talk to you guys a little bit about the.
Kat (05:20)
Middle of the story.
Kat (05:21)
So we’re talking about the middle of the story in my newsletter this week. And if you’re not part of my newsletter and you want to be I have two different newsletters. I have one for readers strictly. They just hear about what I’m reading and what I’m writing and what other people are writing. Sometimes I have book promotions on there.
Kat (05:41)
But if you’re a writer or you’re.
Kat (05:43)
Thinking about being a writer and you want writing tips, there’s also my writing newsletter. And those links are below in the Show Notes. We’re talking about the middle of the story because a lot of times people get stuck in the middle. Whether actually stuck or psychologically stuck, it can happen both ways. And I was telling my newsletter people about how I was just sort of avoiding it. I kept writing lots of words, and I just couldn’t quite get to the middle.
Kat (06:12)
I think this happens a lot.
Kat (06:13)
I think this is why we call it the money middle, because we’re, like, slogging through trying to get there. For some reason, we’re, like, really resistant to the middle. That’s what’s actually happened. We’re resisting going there. It reminded me of when I was probably six years old, and we lived on a farm in Wisconsin, and there was a large tobacco field in our backyard. Yes, Wisconsin gross tobacco. It’s weird. I don’t know that’s what was back there, but it was probably. It must have been the fall and there was no more tobacco there. And it was just a lot of mud. And it had rains, like these weird downpour rains at the Midwest gets. And the cousins and I decided to go out into the field.
Kat (07:04)
Why?
Kat (07:05)
I don’t know. I don’t remember. But we got stuck. Like, really, seriously stuck. The mud would make that sound when you actually got your foot out. It actually made this home, and it went in as well, and you couldn’t quite get your foot out and it.
Amy (07:26)
Would eat your boots.
Kat (07:27)
And it was a mess. And my brother was a smart one to stay out of it. And he was, like, in the yard yelling, Come on, the adults are coming and we’re getting all scared. And the more nervous we got more stuck we got. That kind of reminds me of, like, the middle of the story.
Kat (07:45)
We’re just like, the more we try.
Kat (07:47)
To get there, the more stuck we get. So I was with my home schooler, and we were looking at essay writing. We were looking at tips for Dyslexic kids, you know, how to get your essay done, because essay writing can get pretty overwhelming for Dyslexic kids because they already know that it’s going to be harder for them. And so whenever we know that something’s going to be harder, we resist it, right? And we’re just, like, just seems like too much. And then they can actually override because they feel like they’re not quite getting their point across. So we watched a couple of different teaching videos, and a couple of them said, Start in the middle. Like, don’t start from the beginning, because a lot of times you don’t really know how to get to the middle, but most of the times, you know what the middle should be. So I thought, well, that’s really interesting. I thought, why don’t I just get the middle done? Because I keep trying to get to the middle, right? But instead of getting to the middle, why don’t I just write the middle? And so whether or not I had gotten all the lead up in there, or whether or not the scenes leading up to the transitions or whatever, who cares?
Kat (08:59)
I just need the middle. I need that fight to happen so that things can sort of veer off from there. They can drop this way and the other things can drop that way. And I can see where I need other things to be built up. Right. And so I did. I wrote the middle, and I think this is a really good point to make when you are in the first draft of the book. It is the first draft. And I know that in our industry, everyone’s talking about how to write your book in six weeks and you just get it done and go forward. And that might be possible for some people, especially if you’re writing in a series, because most likely this book is a continuation of the last book. You already have your characters flushed out, more or less. You don’t have to start from scratch. Right. But when you’re starting from scratch, writing a book in six weeks, I mean, maybe you can do it if you have no other responsibilities whatsoever. But I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a good thing to do because art takes time. It needs to ferment in your brain and then on the page.
Kat (10:16)
And so I think it’s okay for it to take less time. Not to say that I wouldn’t love to, like, be completely finished with the story and move on. My goal is to be done with this, the first draft done by the time I get to Spain so that I can focus on my historical fiction, which is set in Spain. So that’s obviously priority. That is the goal. But it’s also okay to take the time. Right. So you need this time. But I was pretty amazed at writing the middle scene. And granted, it’s not perfect because it’s first draft. It allowed me to see where I could cut off the stuff that I was just slogging on. It just doesn’t matter. And I needed to up the ante on a couple of scenes, how I can merge them together. It wasn’t until I wrote that scene that I saw. And now we’re going to really hit him. Okay, so now this happens, and now this is going to happen, and I’m just going to start whacking my protagonist over the head until he finally sees that no matter what he does, it’s never going to be enough for them.
Kat (11:29)
And what he needs to do is start making decisions for himself. Right. And to live his life and to move on and move forward and find that moment where he can forgive and accept who his mother is and be okay with it and be free to fully pursue exactly what he wants to do that he shouldn’t have put his James on hold. Okay, yes. All these things.
(11:57)
Right.
Kat (11:58)
So having written the Middle first opened my eyes to see how much quicker I can make things happen. Right. It also helped me realize, okay, I need a calendar written out. So then I wrote out a calendar of when these things are happening. Because everything in this book happens within four weeks. Four weeks. The loan needs to be paid in four weeks. So I’m not sure I would have really seen that had I not written the middle first. And my experiment with this book is to be able to put the draft away and come back and see what needs to be done for it to be a good book. Not just fix the sentences so that they’re beautiful, but to be able to have that editor eye on my own work. And I’m not yet there, I don’t think. But this is my theory is that if I put it away and if I do the right work on the draft, not that it’s perfect, not that it’s not missing stuff, but it doesn’t matter if it’s missing words as long as the story is fully developed. It’s interesting and it’s a bit faster than Coffee Stains.
Kat (13:22)
I think one of my mistakes with Coffee Stains is that it is quite a slow book. In fact, I kind of made it a slow book because I wanted to show somebody like not being hit over the head with this realization, but slowly coming into OMG. Like, what did I just do? What did I do with the last few months of my life? But some readers love it and some readers don’t like it. They want more fast pace. Now with this book, I want to see if I can make it faster because it all happens in four weeks. But if my brain can also more quickly analyze what needs to be fleshed out more or what doesn’t that make sense? Coffee Stains took me about a year to rearrange and edit, and I want to see if I can get it done. Get this one done in like a few months, possibly a few weeks. I’m going to say possibly a few weeks. So I’m going to try to train my editor eye on this book. I’ve also decided that my protagonist name is not going to be Tread, although I really like Tread. But if I’m going to make an audio book, I can’t have Tread said a lot.
Kat (14:47)
I mean, that’s just going to be annoying. So his name is going to be Tristan and Talon, and Tristan will grow on me, I guess. So those are sort of my ideas. I really want to challenge you if you’re stuck in the middle or if you’re starting a new project, try writing out the middle scene. It’s not that it’s going to be exactly that scene. In fact, you might think it’s a middle scene and you might realize after writing it that it needs to be something completely different. But try to write that middle scene because a it’s the most exciting to write. A lot of times it’s what will.
Kat (15:25)
Get you.
Kat (15:28)
Ready to go on the story. We’re always usually trying to write towards that. But what if you wrote it now and then wrote around it?
Kat (15:36)
I don’t know.
Kat (15:37)
Let me know what you think about that. Have you ever written the middle scene first. Do you write all your books out of order? I don’t know. Somebody said the other day that they know someone who writes literally backwards. And I have not done that yet. But hey, if you write your books backwards, I have questions and I mean just questions like curiosity. So let me know if you do that. But try writing the middle, especially if you’re stuck and you might realize that all that leading up to it you don’t actually need, especially if you’re writing sentences like he sat down and Googled like, no, you need to cut that. You need to cut that sentence. So today’s interview is with Amy Bernstein. I think that you’re going to have a lot of fun listening to her journey as a writer. You’ll see that you absolutely can write a book while on your commute and you being part of the art community can really influence your writing as well. And if you are a nonfiction writer and you’re looking for help with your book, Amy Bernstein is going to talk about herself as a nonfiction writing coach and why she chose nonfiction instead of fiction.
Kat (16:55)
So I hope that you guys have a wonderful day and that you enjoy my interview with Amy. Amy Bernstein writes novels, plays, poems, and hybrid forms of fiction that explore the intersection of politics and culture. Some of her work is realistic, some is experimental, some of it is dystopian, and some is what she calls reality fantasy. She has done many things over the years, all of them involving writing. She’s a former journalist, speechwriter communications director, and grant writing trainer. You can find Amy at Amyrites Live or if you want to connect via social media, you can find her connections in the show notes below.
Kat (17:50)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick.
Kat (17:53)
I’m Kate Caldwell, and today I have.
Kat (17:55)
With me Amy Bernstein. Hello, Amy. How are you doing?
Amy (17:58)
I’m doing great, Kat. Thank you so much for having me on today.
Kat (18:02)
I’m excited to have you on. So you are right now in Baltimore, almost neighboring state to me. Is that where you’re from?
Amy (18:10)
Not originally, but I’ve called at home for a couple of decades, and Baltimore is an absolutely wonderful place to live and work.
Kat (18:18)
It is. It’s very artsy, isn’t it? At least it seems to me.
Amy (18:21)
You know what? It’s got an incredible artist community. Really incredible.
Kat (18:25)
Yeah. Did you get there from work or just are you from East Coast originally?
Amy (18:30)
I got here through love.
Kat (18:32)
Beautiful story. So you write several different in several different genres, several different styles. So will you tell us a little bit about how you came to start writing? Where did it all start?
Amy (18:47)
Well, I make a distinction between I didn’t feel that I could call myself a writer for most of my life until quite recently, and that’s, believe me, that’s quite a number of years. But the truth is that’s really what I’ve always done. I had a career as a writer, but on the nonfiction side, in journalism and government and a little bit of public affairs and a little bit of everything, speechwriting, public radio, newspapers. So I was always writing. And even as a kid, I think I was writing and I was loose major in College, so I was writing lots of papers. But I made a decision some time in the last dozen years or so that life was pretty short. And if I wanted to really quote unquote. Right, I had better get to it. So I kind of started myself on that journey.
Kat (19:38)
So you went from really nonfiction writing to fiction writing?
Amy (19:42)
I did. Well, nonfiction paid the bills. Right. My profession for a long time. But a couple of years ago, with support from an incredibly understanding a husband, I had the privilege of being able to finally step away from a guaranteed salary to focus on writing full time. But I was already I was already doing it, starting with plays and then moving into novels, and I’ve kind of doubled down on all of that.
Kat (20:10)
Interesting. So you started out with plays as your fiction medium? I did. How did you get into that?
Amy (20:18)
I think I interrogated myself and said, what’s calling to me if I want to start writing, if I want to start making stuff up, what is calling to me? And I thought that the structure of a play is what really pulled me at first. And I had completely forgotten, which will sound weird, that I had forgotten. I had forgotten that when I was in middle school, early teen years, I did a tremendous amount of drama as an actor and went to drama camp and did drama in school. And I think for a minute there I thought that that’s what I was going to do. And then I left it all behind for a lot of different reasons. It kind of blocked it out. And then after I started writing plays, it suddenly occurred to me, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, you were a drama kid. You forgot all about that. No wonder you’re writing place.
Kat (21:17)
So did you decide that you were just going to do it for your own enjoyment, or did you want somebody to put the play on?
Amy (21:24)
Well, as with my books, which is what I focus on now, I don’t write to shove things in a drawer. I write to share an experience through storytelling. And writing a play is an incredibly interesting way to tell a story primarily through what people say and not what they do.
Kat (21:51)
Right. Yeah. It’s mostly dialogue, isn’t it?
Amy (21:55)
It’s mostly dialogue.
Kat (21:56)
Right.
Amy (21:57)
Which has helped me a lot in fiction, I can tell you.
Kat (22:00)
Right. Okay. So when you think of this, this to me is like the Spanxs Lady. I have an idea. And now I just go to what factory and make some stuff pretty well.
Amy (22:12)
For her, didn’t it? It does.
Kat (22:15)
It did. But my mind goes, okay, what did she do in the middle? So you went from like, I’m going to write a play. How did you find somebody to put it on? Like, what was your thought process, and how did that happen?
Amy (22:26)
It’s not such a direct line. I found a community of playwrights. Right. In Baltimore. There are a lot of incredibly talented playwrights. So I started learning I also got on the board of a theater, a nonprofit community theater, because what I said to myself was, if I think that I want to do this type of work, I need to understand more about how theater works, because I think as a writer, you cannot live in a hermetically sealed world. You really need to understand the world that you’re operating in and in theater. If you understand a little bit more about the mechanics, it helps you a lot as a writer to figure out what you can put on the stage scripts where you can tell you can tell when you read this play script, if someone doesn’t understand how the stage works, what’s possible, what works in terms of props, what works in terms of movement, what’s really realistic. And so it was a really great learning experience. It really was. And I did have some work produced, and that was incredibly gratifying. And then I just realized I needed more room and time and space for more.
Amy (23:33)
I wanted to get into characters, heads. And so I kind of started moving toward fiction.
Kat (23:37)
Okay, that’s cool. So you would recommend if somebody wanted to do that, you really have to get involved in the community. You have to be in that art drama community.
Amy (23:46)
Well, let me broaden that just say that writing is a very lonely enterprise. And I think that whether you’re writing for the stage or the page or whatever, you really will benefit from meeting and talking with others in that discipline who really will feed your own understanding of the work that you’re doing.
Kat (24:08)
Right. So when you’re writing that you had it produced, do you get a say in how they direct it, or do you really have to write it and then hand it over to the director and hope that they get it right?
Amy (24:23)
So doing writing for theater is extraordinarily collaborative medium, far more collaborative than fiction. Although let me back up and say that when you write a novel, you still have one or even two or sometimes three Editors and a proofreader to go through.
Kat (24:40)
Right.
Amy (24:40)
And so that’s collaborative, too, in a different way. But when you write for theater, the magic about writing for theater is that with a director and a cast, you can bring to life, something was just on the page and you’re putting it up on the stage in real time. And if that director and cast are bringing some ideas forward in how they interpret what you’ve written, it’s just incredible what can happen on the stage that’s not on the page. And I think that’s true in fiction, too. It’s just different. I mean, the right editor can help you unlock something in your own work, or a book coach, for that matter, unlock something in your work that takes you to another place so it can all be collaborative.
Kat (25:25)
Yeah. So are you around as the playwright? Are you around when they’re doing the practices and things like that, or do you, like, drop it off and leave?
Amy (25:35)
Well, there’s very much an etiquette to that. And as a playwright, some playwrights wish to be extremely present and involved, but I found through my experience that if you need to trust a director in a cast to do the work of getting to learn the play and getting it up on his feet, and that as a playwright, it’s better for you to give them that space and trust in their process, which is not your process as the writer. And then you can come back in and you can answer questions. There are playwrights who are extremely involved, many steps of the way. I always felt the need. It was important to trust the director in the cast to take it to a certain place and then come in and see where it was, and then we could discuss what was going on.
Kat (26:22)
Yeah. I can see how a writer might be very fearful of letting it go, but the way that you’re saying it would be almost more fascinating to see where they would take it, where they could move your vision and bring it together with theirs and sort of see where that art form in itself could move to and become that would be kind of cool.
Amy (26:42)
Exactly. There’s a point at which you need to trust in a process that’s larger than you.
Kat (26:48)
Yeah. Because now it’s bringing in other art forms. Right. Like the director and the actors, and everyone’s going to have their sort of idea, and that would be pretty cool to see. Honestly. That’d be very cool. So you went from plays and then you decided to go into novels, is that correct?
Amy (27:05)
Well, yes. There was a bit of an overlap. Somewhere around 2008, I was working full time. I was commuting to Washington, DC, from Baltimore on the train every day. So frankly, I had about 3 hours of train time a day. And I said to myself, all right, you want to write a novel, write a novel. So I wrote a young adult novel, meaning a novel for teens. I wrote a lot of it on the train because I had time and quiet and opportunity, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just knew I’m going to tell the story and I’m going to write the whole thing and I’m going to end it. I’m just not going to quit. Like it wasn’t an option. And I did. And it’s a young adult book and it’s now available on Amazon. And it’s also an audiobook. And it’s kind of a bit of a dark story because that’s kind of the way I roll. And if I had to do it all over, I would do it completely differently. But you have to start somewhere.
Kat (28:02)
Yeah. I think that’s a lot of our story, like, you get to the point as an adult where you’re like, no, I’m just going to finish this thing. I don’t know how many of us have half written things on our computers and it doesn’t go with and then there’s that project that you’re like, no, this is going to be done. And then we’ll figure it out. And I actually love those first novels. I think that there’s something to look back on and be like, you learn something. Right. And you always go a bit forward after that.
Amy (28:30)
Absolutely. And there’s something to be said for tackling it from a naive perspective. In other words, it’s like I don’t have an MSA and I hadn’t taken courses and all this stuff. And the notion is just like, I think I know how to do this. I’m going to do it. I might make mistakes along the way, and I may not see those mistakes, but I’m going to get this thing from beginning to middle to end, and you just kind of plow through.
Kat (28:54)
Yes. And then there’s that other thing where when you have too many courses and you have too many voices in your head and then you can’t tap into your own creativity in your own voice, you have to find that middle. Right as you go forward. So you wrote in Ya. Why did you choose Ya at first? Was it just what the story was?
Amy (29:15)
Looking back? I think at the time, it’s because I was the mother of a teenager. She’s now all grown up. This was some time ago, and I think that must have influenced me more than I thought, because when I look at the book now, I can see all this sort of teen type dialogue that probably I was hearing and overhearing and quite realizing.
Kat (29:36)
It quite genuine, though, right. Because it’s really happening. That’s wonderful. But you said that it’s quite a dark story. Why do you think that you tend towards the darker points of life? Is that kind of a theme for you?
Amy (29:52)
Yes, it really is pervasive in my fiction. I tend to bring some of the tougher stuff in life and social realism into all of my fiction, frankly, whether I’m writing fantasy or mystery or romance, there’s always something that’s grounding it in the harder things. And I think it’s because coming out of a sort of a journalism background and things of this nature and my own temperament, I’m kind of a glass half empty kind of person, not a glass half full kind of person. And I think that’s just going to pervade my world view when I’m building fictional worlds, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be happy endings and redemption, and it doesn’t mean that characters can experience love and joy and things of that nature. But I think that facing the darkness that’s in all of us and the difficult things that comes up, I think that makes for very interesting reading, right.
Kat (30:52)
I can admire the writers who everything is always bubbly, but we live near DC and so the reality of life is the reality of life right in front of us. Did you work in politics at all? You said that you were going back and forth to DC.
Amy (31:09)
I did work in government for about a dozen years. And although I was happy with reality, yeah, it’s pretty heavy.
Kat (31:20)
Like, what are we doing here anyway? So, yes, we’re kind of neighbors in that regard. But I think that writing in a certain way. I mean, I tend to be a little bit like that, too. Like life has to have some bad things happen to the characters because otherwise I wouldn’t be interested in writing them. It doesn’t mean that the beach trees or the things like that don’t have a place, obviously.
Kat (31:43)
It’s just I can’t seem to write them.
Kat (31:46)
I just can’t seem to be that writer. We need all writers. So yeah, anyway, but then you didn’t stick with a genre. So that was interesting. And I did not know this when I started out. I don’t know if you knew it, but you know, you’re supposed to stick to a genre and you’re supposed to write a series.
Amy (32:03)
Can you tell me that I’m quote, unquote supposed to do something. I’m going to kind of go the other way.
Kat (32:11)
But you have heard this, right? This is what we all say.
Amy (32:15)
This is all expression RTFM, which is read the Effing manual. And I’m one of those people who I don’t want to read the manual. I just want to figure it out. And the manual is, Ye shall find your genre and just like go and stay in your Lane and all good things will come to you. And I guess I decided now I’m going to make this harder, even harder. I’m going to skip around because the truth is if I land on a story that I really want to tell and it really won’t let go of me, I’m just going to figure out the way to tell that story. And it’s a mystery or it’s a fantasy or it’s a romance or whatever it is, I’m just going to go there.
Kat (32:56)
Yes, we are kindred spirits as well as neighbors, because I didn’t know this either. I was like, but then how do I write the stories that are in my head if I have to choose which genre to put them in? And I had one book person be like, you just don’t know what to tell me. Another pen name.
Amy (33:16)
He said, it becomes a marketing problem. Right. Not a writing problem. It’s a marketing problem. And I actually have an essay coming out sometime in the next several weeks about the rampant coding of literature. And it really is about the genre fication of fiction in particular, as there are numeric codes that you can assign to every genre and subgenre, and there’s a lot of them. And really, this is for the convenience of the publishing industry. And we love them and we want them to love us. But as writers, we need to have the freedom to go where the muse sends us.
Kat (33:54)
Right. I feel like it was never really an issue. Maybe there were some people who claim that they were Sci-Fi or something like that. But we were talking about women’s fiction the other day, and everyone seems to have a different definition of what that means. Does it have to have a female character? Can I have a male character? Does it have to be written by a woman? And then we started looking at male authors, which I won’t name some off, but okay, they write all different kinds of different novels. Let’s see what they say they are. And they just claim novelists. And I was like, you know what? Females can be novelist, too. I don’t understand why all the men get this name.
Amy (34:36)
I so agree. I think there really is a lingering taboo and stereotype. Not a taboo so much, except maybe certain. But there really is that, like when people say women’s fiction, well, what does that mean? Does that mean could you write a women’s novel about the military? Of course you could. Or about war or something? Of course you could. About wrestling. Of course you could. So what makes it women’s fiction? I so agree with what you said. And I think that if you look at a male author, like Jonathan Branson, who has written several amazing books, and I think it’s been said that he’s almost like he writes, quote, unquote women’s fiction or something. Is that notion? What does that mean?
Kat (35:21)
Because his audience is female? I don’t understand what that means.
Amy (35:25)
Right.
Kat (35:26)
So then, like you said, it becomes more a marketing problem than a writing problem. Right. Because if you write a good story, it’s a good story. It’s just marketing your name.
Amy (35:36)
Correct.
Kat (35:36)
And the algorithms now because of Amazon, the same algorithm. So what was the next book that you wrote? What came to your head next?
Amy (35:46)
So it was many years after that Ya novel I was working on. Working.
Kat (35:53)
Well, you got to make money.
Amy (35:55)
So it wasn’t until about I’m not even sure. Maybe I was writing plays for a while in there and working on that, and probably around 2017, I realized that I needed a different form to write the stories that I was really beginning to want to write.
Kat (36:16)
Okay. Meaning the play didn’t fit for a play.
Amy (36:21)
Right. Okay. It’s funny because there was one thing I tried to start a screenplay, and it just didn’t feel I just wasn’t comfortable in that mode. And that turned into a novel that has not yet been published, but I was trying to find the right place for it. And then there was another one that I was thinking would be a play. And I’m actually kind of starting a new novel that I think is better suited. So it’s just instinctively figuring out what’s the form that serves the story.
Kat (36:52)
Okay. And so how did you find that? Why was it that it wasn’t working as a play? What sort of made you realize that that wasn’t going to be the right form for me?
Amy (37:04)
And I think different writers would have different answers to this. It becomes a combination of not just the number of characters, but the pace at which you wish to unfold the story and the degree to which you want to be in different characters heads and sharing that once you decide that you really want to be in a close third person point of view where you are essentially standing on character shoulders and able to share with the reader what the world looks like to that character, it’s not that you can’t do that in a play. It’s really different. And I found myself gravitating to this other way of doing that. Plus, the truth is I love description. I love narrative passages and description and interior dialogue or interior monologue, however you want to call it. And you can’t do that. You can do other wonderful things on the stage, but you can’t do that on the stage.
Kat (38:06)
Okay.
Amy (38:06)
And finally, I grew up as a reader. I mean, I was a voracious reader as a kid, and I read novels. I didn’t read plays. So that’s what’s kind of in my head.
Kat (38:16)
Yeah. I think the only play I read was Our Town. I think that was still a mandatory.
Amy (38:21)
And I was in Our Town.
Kat (38:24)
I wonder why that became deeply that all American kids had to act out or read. I don’t know. It must have been. Well, we won’t get like, somebody must have paid somebody else. That’s where my mind goes. So was that the mystery book that went next? Which one was it?
Kat (38:43)
The nighthawkers.
Amy (38:45)
Okay, let’s see. To be very real about it. Let’s see. I wrote pretty long novel. I guess it’s 89,000 words that has not yet been published. That’s still in the hopeful category. And then I wrote I am really forgetting my own order here. I think that I wrote The Patrol Complex.
Kat (39:06)
Okay. I love this cover.
Amy (39:10)
Somewhere in between all this, I also wrote Dreams of Song Times, which went through many, many, many drafts. We can talk about that or not talk about that. But then I also wrote The Night Hawkers. And that’s the paranormal romance, which has archaeology and digging at night illegally and lots of magic. And it’s kind of lyrical and kind of it’s kind of a wonderful amalgam of things mystical. And so things are different.
Kat (39:40)
Yes. And you obviously wrote the Protero complex before Covet, but it’s about a pandemic.
Amy (39:47)
Right. I went back to look to try and figure out when I started the Butcherro complex. And oddly enough, I believe I started it at the earliest date I could find. My computer was something like March of 2020, which, of course, was when the pandemic began. And of course, it took me many months to write it. So things were unfolding at a fast clip. And I think that there were many writers at that time processing what was going on and on. This one, too, I went to a pretty dark place that with the Patrol complex. It has to do with questions about who wins and who loses when a society decides that feeling safe is more important than protecting civil rights. And it so happens that China is going through that right now. They’re having severe lockdowns that are aggregating even the limited civil rights that Chinese citizens have. And it’s a really interesting thing to think about. What if that happened here or it looked like it was going to happen here.
Kat (40:53)
Yeah. I think that’s a very interesting thing to question and to be able to put it into a novel makes it a little more digestible. Right. As the consumer, because it is also.
Amy (41:03)
Editoric a mystery to be solved.
Kat (41:06)
Interesting. I like that. So that’s on preorder. Yes.
Amy (41:12)
The Portraiture complex is from Regal House Publishing. It’s on preorder from Regal House. That information is all in my website at Amywrights Live. It is on pre order on Amazon as well. And it comes out August 2.
Kat (41:27)
You get that published really quickly for a traditionally published Nava, only two, I.
Amy (41:34)
Guess it was accepted in 2021. It’s on the list. On the list for 2022.
Kat (41:41)
Yeah, that’s pretty good.
Amy (41:42)
It’s also on the folks. Review from that galley. It’s on Net galley through mid June as well.
Kat (41:49)
Nice. All those people that have all the time to read because they’re on the train now that we have all of our traveling back, which is going back to work anyway, sometimes it was nicer to be at home. So you have that that’s your new one. So now you have four books. Four books.
Amy (42:11)
Well, yes, but published. But you have more the Ya book, which we didn’t even like, put the title out. It’s too confusing. I mean, that’s just there. It’s there. It’s interesting. I’m not trying to, like not sell my own work, but that’s the older, you know, book number one. If anybody wants a free audiobook, I have a fantastically professionally recorded audiobook for that. And I can give you a code. You just have to say the word. But really, I think the paranormal romance, which is the one that’s full of all the archaeology coming out on June 6, and the Poturio complex, which is the mystery thriller coming out on August 2, are the ones I would really focus on because people don’t want to hear me talk about, like, four different.
Kat (43:05)
You were writing the Portrayal Complex in 2020, and then you were writing Let me pull back the other way, and then you were writing the nighthawkers at the same time.
Amy (43:17)
Wow.
Kat (43:17)
Okay. So you write different genres and at the same time?
Amy (43:22)
No, definitely not at the same time. It was definitely sequential. And to be very honest, again, because I really believe in keeping it real about these things. My writing has slowed way, way down. I seem to have gone through this intense writing period, and now it’s taking me a long time to kind of really get into something new.
Kat (43:44)
Okay.
Amy (43:44)
So it comes in waves.
Kat (43:47)
It definitely does, because then you have to sort of find some other inspiration. And, yeah, it just happens. Sometimes it looks like you are super prolific. This happens. My mother downloaded, like, a book, and then another book came out, and she’s like, there’s no way that this author is writing it this quickly were already written.
Kat (44:09)
They’re just coming out now.
Kat (44:11)
She’s like, I don’t know if I want to buy it, because if they’re writing that quickly, it’s going to be full of errors. Like, no, it’s just that it’s coming.
Amy (44:19)
Out now that sometimes we caught the errors.
Kat (44:21)
Yes, we did definitely catch the errors. So what was it like? You’re traditionally published?
Kat (44:28)
Did you find an agent for that.
Kat (44:30)
Or did you go straight to the publishers?
Amy (44:32)
No, I do not have an agent. I would still like that to happen someday. But I have to say that I’m working with Regal House Publishing and the Wild Rose Press, and they’re really quite wonderful. And authors can be happy going directly with the traditional publishing route. Agents are wonderful and do wonderful things for their writers, and so I would never mean to imply that we should cut them out of that process. But if you don’t have an agent, I really would want writers to know that there are many really good publishers who are hungry for good manuscripts, and they will take you through a very professional editing process and give you a fantastic cover and help to promote your book. With the word on help, authors do have to promote their books, but it is definitely a very satisfying way to go, and I’m very happy that that’s where I’ve landed.
Kat (45:29)
I’m glad that you’re having a good experience with it, because in the indie author world, you can sometimes only focus on the bad stories. And it just can’t be true that it’s only bad because otherwise people wouldn’t traditionally publish. So I’m glad to hear that you’re having a good experience with it. How did you find those two different prices, and why are they two different? Is that because of the different genres?
Amy (45:51)
Correct. Because the genres are so different. So the Potaro complex. I actually submitted to an annual contest that Regal house sponsors, and I was a finalist for the Petrochemical Prize. To my absolute astonishment. That’s wonderful, because they liked the book and I was a finalist. They said, we want to publish. So that was one route. So never shy away from submitting to some of the more credible manuscript contests because they really can legitimately help you. The Wild Rose Press was a very deliberate pursuit on my part. Once I had written the romance book, I really wanted a reputable romance in the press. They are very supportive of their authors, and the Wild Rose Press authors really lift one another up as well. So it’s a very friendly place to be with very responsive Editors. And so I was really happy that I was able to land there with them.
Kat (46:50)
Yeah, absolutely. So just for anyone who’s thinking of going that route, did you get it edited before? How much work did you do on the manuscript before you really knew that it was at the point where you could send it out confidently?
Amy (47:05)
Right. And that’s such an important question. And what I always say is that this is an area where I have not followed best practices. So best practices are that as an independent author, meaning you’re not yet an agent at author, you should absolutely. Once you’ve completed your manuscript, you should find beta readers, which means not your sister, not your brother, not your cousin, not your mother. It means folks who can give you a really constructive, independent feedback on your manuscript and what draws them in and what is perhaps puzzling or troubling them or where they may have kind of fallen away or lost interest. You want some really honest feedback, beta readers? I didn’t do any beta readers, okay? That is a best practice. I ignored it. Many people also do invest in independent editor, and there are many, many, so many good Editors out there who will basically read your whole manuscript and tell you where your continuity is not working, where you said one thing happened at night, but then the scene is recreated during the day where you change the character’s name. The Editors can do so much for you in advance as well, to make sure that your grammar is correct, that you are handling dialogue and punctuation and paragraph breaks correctly, all those kinds of things.
Amy (48:23)
I didn’t do that either. I just basically whipped my drafts into the best possible shape that I could and sent them into the world. That’s all I can say.
Kat (48:35)
But do you think that confidence comes a little bit from how much writing you’ve done in your life? I mean, your grammar must be pretty good. I know most journalists have to sort of catch all their mistakes. They’re the ones self editing, right? You have to be pretty good handing in pretty clean drafts. Is that true?
Amy (48:58)
I guess overall, the answer is yes. I’ve done a lot of writing. And I think that I do understand a lot of the fundamentals. That doesn’t mean that my books would not have become better had I not forced myself through those other processes beta readers and even an independent editor. And look, again, I keep saying it, but keeping it really real. The novel that I’ve not yet published probably needs probably needs to go through that Ringer. I just have to be ready to take it there, right?
Kat (49:38)
Yes. And you know what? Sometimes it’s hard to know because sometimes you can get beta readers who you will feel like you still have to make a choice. Are they changing the story or do you want where do you want to draw that line? And it’s a creative process. Right. So you kind of have to figure out what works for you. And I would say if a traditionally published a traditional publisher wants to publish, they know what they’re doing. They want to make money with you. So it must be must be pretty.
Amy (50:10)
They want to make money. They’re not going to sign contract with you if they don’t think that they can help sell books or help you sell books so that you can help them sell books. Helping. It’s all about helping. But again, I’ll just come back to this notion of working with a book coach, particularly a book coach who has been certified is incredibly helpful for a fiction or a nonfiction writer, because you’re going to get someone who’s not focused on your line edits, but is really focused on taking you through the journey about the structure and how the story is really unfolding and where it may be weak and where you can maybe deepen and improve it and really helping you through kind of a blueprint for your book. It’s an incredibly valuable thing to do. And a beta reader is lovely, but that’s really just a reader. A book coach is someone who’s going to be with you kind of through the long haul and help you get your draft to be in the best shape there can be.
Kat (51:05)
Right. They’re more professional, I guess, that they would know not just tell you what’s wrong but help you fix it, which a reader can’t always do.
Amy (51:15)
Right. Because the book coach really is a champion, but also will hold you accountable. And we’ll also give you structure and guard reels and specific tools to help you work through your own thought process. Writing could be like in the wilderness, kind of an exercise. You can write yourself into corners and write yourself off the map, so to speak. And a coach will really help you get centered in what you’re trying to accomplish in that work.
Kat (51:40)
Right. So when you’re a book coach, you’re a nonfiction book coach.
Amy (51:46)
Right.
Kat (51:46)
Why did you choose nonfiction?
Amy (51:49)
Two reasons. One, I have a very extensive professional background as a nonfiction writer in journalism and a lot of complicated government stuff. And really, I’ve done so much in nonfiction, except for literally write a nonfiction book. I mean, I’ve been a book reviewer, and I’ve written congressional testimony and executive speeches, and I’ve done PR and media and journalism for print and public radio. So I’ve done a lot in the nonfiction side, but I’m a novelist, so I understand storytelling and the power of storytelling. So for me, it’s about bringing those things together. And I really want to work with, as I put it, the nerds and the wonks who have a passion to share information with the world and need someone to help them figure out how to put some structure and parameters around doing that. And also because I’m writing fiction, I don’t want to coach fiction. It’s psychologically confusing to me.
Kat (52:56)
Okay.
Amy (52:57)
That’s why I’ve made that separation as a nonfiction.
Kat (53:00)
Do you focus on something? Do you focus on memoirs or on business, or do you right.
Amy (53:06)
I actually prefer not to work in memoir. And there are many incredible coaches who are doing amazing work with memoir. The rules for memoir tend to follow the rules for fiction writing more than they do for the rules for nonfiction, because a lot of it is about what we call refer to the arc of change and things that are really important in fiction. And it’s so important to build scenes and to build momentum in memoir. I actually want to work with entrepreneurs and physicists and engineers and architects and archeologists and folks who are coming from the Sciences and humanities and trying to wrap their heads around the story that they have to tell that might involve some complex technical stuff, because I’ve dealt with a lot of really technical stuff in the past, and I love helping to sort of make that come clear.
Kat (54:04)
Yeah. Because I can see how a scientific mind might sit in front of their computer and say, how would I write a book about it so that people understand me? That’s amazing. Yeah. Nonfiction can be intimidating to read, but there are so many interesting things out there. So if there are people like you willing to coach them into writing a book that people like me with very little scientific background can understand.
Amy (54:31)
Exactly.
Kat (54:33)
You have a reader right here that.
Amy (54:35)
Would appreciate it putting it out to the universe.
Kat (54:38)
Yes, absolutely. So if anyone wants to get a hold of you, whether it’s book coaching or learn more about your books, they can go to Amywrights Live. Is that the best place to find you?
Amy (54:51)
That’s absolutely the best place, because I’ve got all the info about all the novels, and there’s a tab that will tell you enough about the book coaching to send you someplace else, if that’s what you’re interested in. But Amyrites Live is the place to start, for sure.
Kat (55:04)
So this is your thing. Now you are a fiction writer and a nonfiction coach.
Amy (55:10)
That’s one thing. Those are my things that’s amazing.
Kat (55:15)
Well, thank you so much, Amy for coming onto the show.
Amy (55:19)
Pat this has been just a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed the conversation so much and thank you so much for having me and for asking such interesting questions.
Kat (55:41)
Hey, you’re still listening since you are could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the pencil Olympic podcast get out into the world and if you’re enjoying the podcast, well then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to Catcaldwell.com. I have my story over there. My books, my interactive journals, my oneonone coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all.
Kat (56:27)
The things that go into being an.
Kat (56:29)
Author these days, check out the membership group there is a 14 free day trial that you can try it out get into the masterminds find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.