SPEAKER_13 0:00

I wanted to leave you with something that feels a bit like a love letter. It's part pep talk, part permission slip, part greatest hits. And especially if you are in short supply right now, I want this to deliver the impacts of hope and permission. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared podcast, where we talk about the brave and messy act of writing our novels so that we can do it with more confidence, more clarity, and not feel so damn alone. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, and today is our final episode of season two. That's right. We are wrapping up. I'm pressing pause on the podcast for the rest of summer, but we'll be back in the fall with a brand new guest lineup and fresh topics to help you improve your craft, build your confidence, and keep putting your stories into the world. But before we go, I wanted to take a minute to reflect back on this season because it's been amazing. Nearly 30 episodes that have covered everything from character development to romance writing, from understanding genre and building magic systems, from world building to the emotional realities of putting your work out into the world. And none of that would be possible without the amazing guests, the writers, and the industry experts who are willing to come on the show and share their valuable and often vulnerable truths and experience. Through their stories and in your messages and emails, I've been reminded again and again what this podcast is really about. It's about spreading hope. It's about hope and learning, hope and information, so that we can all grow together into the writers that we want to be. This season we talked a lot about the emotional roller coaster of writing, how we win, how we doubt, how we start, how we stall. So before I sign off, I wanted to leave you with something that feels a bit like a love letter. It's part pep talk, part permission slip, part greatest hits. And especially if you are in short supply right now, I want this to deliver the impacts of hope and permission. You have the permission to write the story you wish to see in the world. You have the permission to write as slowly as you need to. You have the permission to rest. You have the permission to not know how the story ends, bitch about it, and then work up to writing that ending anyway. You are allowed to be frustrated with your draft. You are allowed to keep writing it anyway. You are allowed to believe that it matters even if no one else can see it. You are allowed to see that your writing has merit just because you're writing, not because of outcomes. You are allowed to trust your voice even when it feels shaky. You do not need to be fearless to do this work. You just have to keep showing up. And if you've been around a while, you probably know this already. But my definition of hope is hearing other people's stories. So I can think of no better way to end this season than to give you just that. So let's listen back to some of the advice and encouragement from the guests who joined the podcast this year. First, we'll hear from book coach and middle grade fiction writer Michelle Reginald and psychological suspense author Kristen Offler, who remind us that it's perfectly okay to take our time. Stories are built in layers, and it's important to swim in your own lane and just enjoy where you are in the process as much as you can, because it's going to change and more will be revealed.

SPEAKER_05 4:47

Take your time back to your characters as you get to know them. I did interviews early on for my middle grade mystery. It's set at a fictional version of the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, Minnesota. And then after I finished the draft and was going back to revision, I went back and did some more interviewing and I learned new things. Like you mentioned earlier, it's always layers. You can't get everything in one pass. And that's that's true with interviewing characters and getting to know your characters too. There's it's just like human beings. No. You and I know each other a little bit, but if we actually live close to each other, it could interact in, you know, real life. That would probably add some really fun dimension. It's the same with characters.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

Enjoy the bubble before anybody's really expecting it, before you have, you know, the pressure of deadlines and expectations around it. Really enjoy that it gets to be yours and you get to do whatever you want with it. Nobody has yet told you, you know, that it should look like this or that, or you don't have to, you know, change your vision at all. Like enjoy that. And also trust yourself and have faith in the idea that you have. And don't, this is a big one, but don't be the first person to tell yourself no. Let that be someone else's job. You know, I think as writers, we're really quick and really harsh. We're harsh on ourselves and we're our own worst critics a lot of the time. But let someone else be the one to tell you no. You see it through, you get it as good as you can get it, and then don't stop yourself. Let someone else out there be the one to say, no, this is not the thing, but don't do that to yourself.

SPEAKER_13 6:30

Now let's hear from YA thriller author MK Pagano, romance book coach Trisha Jin Lair, and literary fiction author Alexandria Fulkenberry, who remind us to protect the joy that we get from crafting our stories, not to rush and to just be kinder to ourselves.

SPEAKER_09 6:48

I wish you would be kinder to yourselves. If you've read my debut, you probably understand that the theme is like girls need to be kinder to themselves, but that goes for everybody. I would say celebrate your wins and understand that it takes a while. Don't be in a rush and you know, just keep pushing yourselves forward to be better, not than not better than your neighbor, not better than that book you just read, but just better than your past self. And I think with persistence and consistently working on your craft, I think you could get there.

SPEAKER_11 7:23

You deserve to write and enjoy whatever type of romance stories you want to write or read. You deserve to put your time and your energy and whatever else you want into that. You deserve it.

SPEAKER_12 7:40

Be happy that you wrote today. Be happy that you finished a chapter or a manuscript, be happy that you sent out a query, because that's really scary. So that would be my overall wish. Just to be happy with the little successes that you find and not let comparison and self-doubt take away from those joys.

SPEAKER_13 7:59

Now let's hear from short story author Demi Michelle Schwartz, middle grade fantasy author Gloria Huang, women's fiction author Brooke Adams Law, and political science fiction thriller author Michael Fedore about hardships, struggle, and the importance of perseverance.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

I just wish for everyone to find success, how they envision that, and also to be happy along the way. Publishing can be a shit show and a nightmare and just a terrible place at times, based on like how you're feeling and what you're going through, and just like things going on in the industry that can make you feel really discouraging. And sometimes it's easy to lose the happiness. So, like through all of that, like I wish for like all of my fellow authors to hold on to that happiness even during the dark times and to chase your dream, whatever that looks like for you.

SPEAKER_06 8:51

That's a great question. I think my wish is for my writing colleagues to have the kind of emotional strength of fortitude to kind of battle through all of the stuff that is publishing. So not just the rejections, but also the waiting and the silences and the the uncertainty. And it's hard. It can be emotionally hard to put so much of yourself into a, you know, into a story or into a book and then send it out in the world and hope that it reaches someone else and that they want to keep moving it forward to have it reach other people. And so my wish would be that we have the armor to kind of let that bounce off of us and we can keep going. Because you're right. It's so important to get those stories out in the world. It's so important to hear all those different voices.

SPEAKER_08 9:35

I wish that you would be relentless, which I think is the one quality carried me through all the things that I just shared. Be relentless, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Be confident, believe in yourself. Even when those pangs, those voices in your head are saying this is not going to be good enough, no one's gonna buy it. There's hard work you have to do to make sure that they do and that they do know it's there. But I think you have to trust that there there is a readership. If you're telling something that's genuinely authentic and has some power behind it, then believe in that and commit to it and and push it across the finish line. Then do the work to find your readers and bring them in because it just doesn't magically happen. There's a business to this and a marketing business to this, and learn that craft too. But believe in yourself. Don't let the voice of self-doubt drowned out what should be the louder voice of hope in your head.

SPEAKER_13 10:29

And next we have fantasy and romanticy author A.M. Deese and author and nonfiction book coach Amy Bernstein, who talked to us about finding a way to make it happen and learning to take risks with our words.

SPEAKER_10 10:43

I would hope for writers to do everything in their power to make sure that their stories come out and find their readers. I mean, it's such a subjective art form that it's crazy because somebody's favorite book could be something that somebody else hated. You never know when you're gonna find that person that just tells you that story that you wrote is exactly what I needed to read. And it could definitely happen. And all you need to do is put the words out because it can't happen if you don't write them. So it I would just think that everyone is staying brave and being fearless and putting yourself out there. And if you find that you're not in a situation where it's gonna happen this way, find another. It didn't work with that agent, find another, didn't work with that publisher, self-publish, find something you can do.

SPEAKER_04 11:43

We have to learn how to take healthy risks. Uh, and so for me, that means I will never budge jump off a bridge. That's for me, that is not a healthy risk. I'm just, this is not going to be my thing. But a healthy risk for me is submitting a novel for for publication and being willing to accept the rejection because the healthy side of that risk is that I am putting my work out there and I'm I'm ready for the world to try and you know meet me on terms. And so uh we have to be able to both uh negotiate and sometimes renegotiate our our relationship to to risk in the sense of being ready to get a no from the world or from the universe, being ready to take that rejection in and still go forward. And we have to be willing to take those chances and tell ourselves in advance, I am willing to take these chances.

SPEAKER_13 12:37

And then finally, let's hear from author and book coach Gina Kamer and literary agent and author Amy Nielsen, who remind us that our stories do matter and that we need each other to write them.

SPEAKER_07 12:51

We need to keep longing and hoping, and there's no better genre to help us do that than the speculative kind. So yeah, we need your story. It's a worthy endeavor, not only for your own well-being and meaning making, but for other readers too.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Oh well, I think we talked about this earlier, and that's build a community. I think that is the most important. I just think if you don't have a community around you, this is gonna be a much harder journey. And you need three best friends, one person that's a little ahead of you on the journey, so that can mentor you, one person that's at the same place of the journey that you are, so you can lean on each other, and then eventually you mentor someone behind you that's wanting to be where you are. So I just think that building your writing community, all of those different moving people, I think really help flesh you out as an author and give you the opportunity to give back.

SPEAKER_13 13:48

Okay, writer. So you heard it from the guests, and I will say it again too. Your story matters. Don't let anyone, especially yourself, talk you out of writing it. I hope that you heard something in these voices today that you needed to hear, whether it was permission to rest, encouragement to keep going, or just a reminder that you are not doing this alone. And I will make sure to post the links to each of the guests' episodes in the show notes. This season has been such a gift from the solo episodes to the generous and wide open conversations with other writers, navigating their own doubts and dreams. And I just want to thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing, thank you for showing up, even when you feel uncertain. And if you're looking for a deeper level of support on your novel writing journey, my small group book coaching program for commercial fiction writers who are working through story development or are stuck in their draft and in need of support, we'll be opening back up in the fall of 2025. We're going to start the cohort in September and it will run through the first week of December. And this is for writers who are tired of second-guessing themselves, ready to make progress, gain traction, and want some additional emotional support and encouragement along with the accountability and a structured learning environment. And when I say small, I mean small. These cohorts are limited to six writers. I'm taking enrollment over the summer. So if you are interested, head on over to my website, writeitscared.co forward slash group coaching, where you can learn more and apply. All right, writer. I look forward to talking to you in the fall where we're going to come back with a fresh guest list, new episodes, and more tools to help you keep writing the stories that you want to put in the world. Until then, take care of yourself, protect your joy, and keep writing it scared. I'll see you soon. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.