SPEAKER_00 0:00

You have to remember why you started writing. And the reason we start writing is because we are storytellers. And sometimes no one's listening to the story, but the story still mattered to you. And before we had all these dreams of thousands of people reading our books, it was just us alone in the room entertaining ourselves with the story. And I think if you don't keep that core, you'll get lost along the way because we can't control the rest of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

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 Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Red It Scared podcast, where we talk about the brave and messy and vulnerable act of writing our novels so that we can do it with more clarity and more confidence by not feeling so alone. Today's episode is a really special one. As a matter of fact, it's probably one of my favorites. And I had the pleasure of chatting with author Emmy McGuire about her debut adult mystery thriller, No One Aboard, which came out in December of 2025. And though Emmy is in her early 20s, her journey to get here is anything but overnight. From deciding at nine years old that she would become a published author to writing multiple books that never saw the light of day, to navigating rejection and burnout and long stretches where she didn't write anything at all, Emmy candidly shares the full story of her striving for a dream. We also dive into the craft behind her multi-POV dual timeline thriller, which is set at sea, and talk about how she learned to balance plot and character and what she learned through writing her first mystery after years of working in other genres. But more than anything, this is a conversation about staying connected to why you write in the first place, especially when no one is watching, no one's reading, and you're just in the thick of the hard parts. If you've ever questioned whether it's worth it to keep going, this episode is for you. Let me give you her bio, and then we'll jump in the interview. And fair warning, there's lots of snort laughs ahead. Amy McGuire is a full-time actor, author, playwright, and pirate. She has written a queer pirate musical, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and toured the United States as a performer in the Edgar Allen Poe Speakeasy. She has a degree in theater and in creative writing from New College, Florida. No one Aboard is her debut novel, and her second novel, They Only Found Her, will be out December 15th, 2026 and is available for pre-order now. Emmy, hi, welcome to the Red It's Scared podcast. This is try three of me just saying hello. So we'll see what happened. Bupsi. So glad to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

How are you? I'm very tired, but happy that it's the holidays and I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

You're absolutely welcome. So your bio that I read was so fun. Performer and in an Edgar Allen Poe, speakeasy. We were talking for a few minutes before I hit record. I went and saw one of them a couple of years ago, and they were such a delight. But you just all over the map, you've degree in theater, creative writing. We have a novel that's out. I think it's out now, right? Yes. It's out as of a week. As of a week ago. Congratulations. And that is the one we're going to talk about today. And then you all you also have a queer pirate musical out in the world. This is so fun. So before we dig into talking about your novel, why don't you just share a bit? Like, how did you get into all of these things?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Yeah, I guess I've always been a storyteller. I was a theater kid, and so that was imbued into me. But I have this very specific memory of being nine years old. It's November 11, 2011. And I'm sitting in the car. My big brother says that it's a special day that will never come in our lifetimes again, and that we could have one wish that would come true no matter what, because it was 11-11-11. So we waited until 11 o'clock to the 11th minute, to the 11th second, and then we both said our wishes. And he wished to be an origami master, and I guess he's still working on that. I wished to be a published author, which as of December 2nd, so a few days ago, I have officially done. So I think it it began there. And I've been writing books since then, and been part of plays since then, been telling stories as an actor and as an author, and more recently as a playwright and a composer and a songwriter. And I feel like by making that decision as a kid and taking myself seriously from the very beginning, everything else in my life oriented around that. Everything was secondary to that dream. And I think that's why I'm where I am right now.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Wow. That's incredible. How did you know? How in the world did you know at that age?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

I was really lucky. I think I was lucky because I don't know. I think it's a little bit divine and a little bit of just knowing myself really well and being a very precocious little kid who is, I already know what I want to do with my life. And just being confident in what I loved and my ability to make more of what I loved in the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I love that. And I wish that for every kid out there. Yes. That is so cool. That is so cool. I did not have a path like that. I didn't figure out what I wanted to do until I was much older.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

But then I think if you don't figure out what you want until you're older, you get to go on this really fun adventure. And I think part of one of the downsides of knowing what I wanted from a young age was I felt so much pressure and anxiety. And it was completely self-enforce. No one else was telling me I had to do all these things that in my heart I felt like I had to do. Like I remember crying on my 18th birthday because I hadn't published a book yet, which is ridiculous. But to my 18-year-old self, I it was just, it felt like nothing else in my life mattered. So definitely an obsessive element to it as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Wow. And happy book birthday to you.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah, seriously. So we're recording this in December. Today's December 10th, I think. And it came out December, what did you say? Second. December 2nd. So when this airs, which is what gonna be in the spring, it'll have been out for a couple of months. Let's dig into talking about your novel. So, what's this book about? What do you want readers to know?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

No the board is about this wealthy family. This kind of, I picture them as their America's sweethearts. Family of four. It's a mom and a dad and a boy and a girl. And they go on this vacation on their luxury sailboat. And then three weeks later, a local fisherman finds their sailboat off the coast of Florida completely empty. And the story follows the family going, setting up off on the boat, and then also the fishermen and the aftermath of this mass missing person's case. Because we have the four missing family members, and then there are three crew members. So it's seven people completely vanished. And it is very much a sinister kind of lyrical story. I wanted the atmosphere to really reflect being out at sea and the hauntingness that comes from that, but also mixed with dysfunctional family members and complicated relationships and dangerous relationships and what happens when you put all these man-v man conflicts on a man-v nature in the middle of the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

I could do not want to read that. That sounds amazing. Yeah. I read one of the, oh, I don't know what you call it. I guess the hook. One of the hooks. The way to describe it was the white lotus meets the last thing he told me. Yeah. Which I think it's Lana. Is it Lisa Duel? No, no. But Lisa Duel has something like what you describe. But it's Laura Dave. That's who it is. Laura Dave. She's amazing. And yeah, and her show's optioned. She's going to Apple, Apple TV series picking that up. I know, right? I think it's coming out in 2026 with Jennifer Garner. I'm looking forward to seeing that because I love that book too. But yeah, so definitely a domestic family mystery thriller. Yes. Yeah. On the high seas. Yeah, exactly. That is so cool. Okay. I have questions. We talked a little bit about the things that you wanted to incorporate and embody to come across in the narrative, the kind of the haunting feeling, the isolation feeling. But why are those interests for you? Like where did all that come from?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Okay, so I lived on this sailboat and we sailed from Rome to Antigua. So we went down across the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, to the Canary Islands, across the Atlantic, and into the Caribbean to Dominica and Antigua. And when we were crossing the Atlantic, I had a dream. And the dream was about I had just been listening to podcasts because we were at sea across the Atlantic for 17 days. So I knew my phone was gonna die, and I was running out of books and I was running out of things. So I downloaded a bunch of podcasts until to see how long my phone could last. One of the ones I downloaded was the Mary Celeste, which is one of the most famous ghost ships in history. It's I think 1862 or 72. This ship set sail from New York, headed across the ocean, and then it's found a few weeks later, and no one is on the ship. And they never found out what happened to them. There's a lot of people, including the captain and his wife and their three-year-old daughter. They never found them. So both ships are not only a huge part of history, but they're also things that still happen to this day. In 2021, there was this Japanese ship full of all these men that completely all of them went missing, and they still don't really know what happened. But so I was thinking about all that. And then I had this dream. And in the dream, I saw this small little sailboat, and it was sunset, like the sky was orange. And I just knew in the dream that there were these two twins who had gone missing from the boat, and everyone in the world was freaking out. And then I woke up and from there it developed into not only the twins, but their family and their family's crew members, and until it was the seven-person mystery of the ghost ship. I also thought it was interesting because, like that Japanese ship that went missing in 2021, people don't really pay attention to nautical disasters unless they're A, from history, or B, to someone that we as the American public can relate to. And I thought Orbigellan would make right, exactly. Who would people want to think about more than an American family who done the American dream and the mom's a movie star and the dad's a business tycoon and the kids are these great boarding school kids with uniforms? And so I thought that was the perfect the perfect people to tell the story, this gilded American family. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of the information. Exactly. Yeah. It's like this rotten society mixed with the dangers of nature and all of that informed by my own experience by being at sea.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

And it also gives me some vibes without the speculative fiction angle. It gives me some vibes of the fall of the house of Usher. I love that show. Really? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So if we put all these people on a boat and there wasn't like, I don't know, a demon.

unknown 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Forgive the but definitely getting getting vibes of like trust, family wands, like hidden past. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Everyone's got a secret.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Everybody's a secret. I love it. I love it. Okay. So you said you got the idea for the book around 2022. What was your process like for writing this novel?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Yeah. So this was during my junior year of college. So I came back from the boat. I started writing it over Christmas break of 2022. So early into 2023. But then I had to fly back to Florida, which is where I went to college. And I was preparing for my senior thesis, which was my pirate musical. So I had to set aside the few chapters I'd written, which were Jerry's first few chapters, The Fisherman, and then just completely dive into writing all the music and the script and everything while I was a little bit going back and forth. I would try to write a chapter a week. And then I finished the musical and I flew back to Colorado for the summer. And I told myself I was going to finish the book that summer before everything with the musical went crazy, which it did. So I finished the book. I just put my nose to the grindstone and I wrote it the few months of summer and I finished it in July 2023, the first draft.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

So is this the first book you'd ever written, or had you written other long-form narrative fiction before? This is the seventh book I had.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah. But the only one to see the light of day.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

So that's really important to put out there. Also, to put this in perspective, you've your dream, I think you said at 11. You started at nine. Yeah. At nine. It was at nine, but it was on 11, 11, 11 that you that you put the manifestation out there from nine years old. You knew what you wanted. And so that's where you have been angling. So seven books later. This is the seventh book?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yes. Or this is the eighth, seventh book. This was the seventh book. I yeah. At the time. Yeah. I don't think I could have written this book if I hadn't written those other six books because I just I knew I know how to write a book now. Not even skill-wise, but like I know how to make myself sit down and finish a long form project. So when I got the idea, the question was never, will I be able to write this book? It was just like, okay, how long is this book going to take me? Whereas the first few books I wrote, it was like, will I ever finish a project? Can you can I even get to the end? And by the time I wrote this one, I had given myself all the skills I needed to be able to get to the end, which is the hardest part.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Absolutely. It takes what it takes. And persistence is the key. I love that. Yes. Yeah. I'm very curious, like, why did you settle on the narrative delivery that you did using someone outside of the actual incident or the core group of people where that that the I'm not, I don't know what happens to them, but the people that were on the boat. What made you decide to use an outside lens? And then how did you go about determining how to present the rest of the story?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Because that just felt so it felt so cinematic and it felt very thematic as well. And of what happens and why things happened the way they did. And we need that, we need that hook at the beginning. Yep. And so I knew that it needed to start like that. So I started with this fisherman, a fisherman that I had only planned on there being, he was only supposed to be one chapter. And then I fell in love with him because he's just this sweet, crouchy old man who just hates everybody and wants to go fishing. And I feel like I know people like that. And I don't know, I wanted to spend time with him. I had a lot of people who were like, I don't want to read about this man. And it's like, yeah, but I really want to write about him. So then he became one of the four perspective characters. But I always knew I wanted to go back to the family because family is the center of the intrigue. And it's not as interesting to hear about what happened to them if we're just getting news reports or even if we had a detective character. And in this case, Jerry, the fisherman, he's not a detective. So he's not going to get access to this case. I didn't want it to be from a detective's perspective because I don't know enough about that. I don't feel qualified. And I don't think it's as interesting as being there. So I always knew we were going to go back to the beginning. And then Jerry became part of the story emotionally, but also he serves as whenever we go back to Jerry, we learn something in the present that gives us a measure of suspense for the past. We find out this detail, and then we know to look for it as the reader when we're back in the past with the family. I think also with the family, it started as just from the daughter's perspective. But then I was like, Well, it's her brother thinking, what's her mom thinking? And so it expanded to the four of them to Tia the daughter, Rylan the son, Lila the mom, and then Jerry, the old curmudgeonly fisherman who finds their empty boat.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Wow. This is not a simplistic single POV story, right? Yeah. So it's a dual timeline, but it sounds like it's linear in both timelines. It's linear, yeah. Yeah. So this is definitely a feat. Thank you. Yeah. I hope so. It's a great takeaway to think about when you write. It's about storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

It's about what it's not just about good writing, right? It's about what is going to pique interest and curiosity. And how do you get the reader or the viewer to go, what? Yeah. And then what is going to happen next? And those are devices of narrative drive. So do you find those in the first draft, or do you find that you needed to layer them in revision, or is it just an organic process for you?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I think what I discovered writing this, because this was the first thriller class mystery I'd had ever written. All my other books were YA fantasies or contemporaries. And part of what I realized, and this is my new mantra, and it's, I don't know why I didn't get this earlier, because it's so simple, is that just to write what is the most interesting thing to happen next for me as the writer. Like I can't predict the reader because I'm too inside it. If I'm ever bored writing, then I've already bored the reader who hasn't even read it yet. So I would be sitting in a scene, I'd be like, okay, what's the craziest thing, the most interesting thing that I would want to see happen next? That the world that I want to live in, the moment that I want to write. And that really carried me through. So I think by the first draft, I had most of all the right pieces, except for the ending. The ending I rewrote a few times. And there were a couple of plot points that I had to switch around and make it more of a stare format where everything is ramping up. But for the most part, because I was just following that, okay, what's the most interesting thing that could happen next? It fell into place in that way. And because I knew the character arcs. That was the other thing. I knew where I wanted them to begin and end. So, what were the hard parts of crafting a book like this? I'm not a natural outlinger planner or any of the above. So it was really hard to because you can't not outline a mystery. You just can't. So I tried to outline things and I tried to make things make sense. That was really hard. And I think I suffered more in editing because of my lack of ability to outline the strassed. That was really hard. It was also very hard to just to be to go from, oh, this idea is in my head. Okay, now my agent has it. I'm used to that. Oh, now a publisher has it. Okay, now there's a whole team looking at me. Okay, everyone's looking at me now, and everyone's looking at this thing, and this is my presentation to the world as a debut storyteller, and that's terrifying. So the hardest part was really just psyching myself out, just trying to be mind over matter and tell myself that I just had to write the book. I was doing nothing for nobody to think about it and think about people's reaction to it and think about every single sentence and if people were going to be intrigued or interested or upset. That was the hardest part. It still is.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

I bet. As far as craft-wise, because you're putting out another book that is similar, it's similar vibes. Very, and it sounds like that one's dusted.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, that one, the first draft is done. It's with my editor right now, so I'm waiting for edits. And we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

So I guess my question is what did you learn from the first book? And how did that change your process at approaching the writing of the second one? Since this is in the same genre.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

I think part of what I learned is I'm also an underwriter. So I tend to just get to the point so quickly that there's no flesh on the bones. There's nothing meaty about the story until I go back and edit it. So with the second book, I really I let myself meander a bit. I let myself well, it feels like meandering to me is probably just normal to everyone else because I'm just, I don't know, explaining my characters a little bit instead of like diving into the plot. So I try to be more character-based. That is not my natural either. I just think of the plot and okay, what happens? What happens? But I've really tried to work on who are these people and let myself spread the story out a bit more. So I think the first draft I turned in is 85,000 words, which is crazy for me because normally my first drafts are 60,000 words. So you Yeah, meandering, letting it spread, the characters, and also knowing the big twist and being able to better foreshadow those going in. And I think hopefully being more aware of what readers want in that you're still following the mantra of what's the next most interesting thing that could happen, but then crafting that in a more precise way. And then also, I think I'm just a better writer now. I read No One Aboard and I'm like, okay, my 20-year-old self wrote that. It's a little embarrassing. So it's great to have a book that my 23-year-old self wrote that's, I think, better writing.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I think that's what we all hope for, is like the next thing we just continue to improve.

unknown 22:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yes. So yeah. I might have heard this at a podcast or something, but I always think back to to Riley Sager, who's got lots of books out right now. Yes. And I think I don't know if it was him, but I really want to say it was. I hope the first one isn't that great because and I just keep continuing to improve and improve. Yeah. And try new things and learn new angles. And I just think that is is a really cool perspective. I guess writing keeps you humble in some ways because you'll never master the whole thing. There's always new stuff. And I think that's art. There's no way to master really. Yeah, exactly. You just keep going. You're always a student of it. So it's bottomless. Yeah. So I do have a question. It wasn't on the ones I sent you, but it caught my ear. You said that your agent told you that this particular book was a thriller. And so I'm curious, were you already with that agent? Had you gone out on sub before with another book or something? Tell me the story. Walk me through the process of you getting agented.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Here's the story. I started querying agents when I was 13 because I read this book. It's called The School Story. It was called The School Story, and it's about, I don't know her name, this character, and she writes a book, and then her friend Zoe is, I'm gonna be your literary agent. And I thought to myself, ooh, what's a literary agent? I thought that was very cool. So I looked up literary agents for fantasy because I had written a brilliant 60,000 word YA fantasy about this spy. And I was like, oh yes, this is I'm going to get published with this book. So I need to find a literary agent. That's the next step. So I queried that. I figured out what a query was. I did a lot of research and I sent out, I don't know, 10 queries and I got a few rejections, and mostly they just ignored me. And I was like, all right, that's cool. And my parents really encouraged me to keep track of the rejections so that I could celebrate them. So every time I got a rejection, I could be like, yes, number four, yes, number five, instead of, no, I got rejected again. Because they said you're not going to get an agent when you're 13. And it's like, that's fair. So I printed out these rejections and I would take them up on my wall, and I had a big red marker and I put one, two, three. Then when I was 15, I wrote another book called The Queen of Seasons Sin. And it's a YA romance between a pirate and a siren. And I decided to query that one. So I sent out a ton of a ton more queries. I think, I don't know, like 10. That's not a 10. It felt like a ton to me when I was 15. And I got one response that said, Hey, Emmy, I liked your first few chapters. Can I read the rest of the book? And I freaked out, and I sent that to her. Her name's Anne. And then I remember this is like the most crystal clear memory of my whole life. I remember being at school. Uh I'm a junior in high school, and I'm right outside math class. And I was looking through my emails for like my math homework or something. I don't know what I was doing. And I see that I got an email from the agent that I hadn't heard from since June, and this is now September. And she said, Hi, Emmy, love the book. Do you have a few minutes to talk tonight? Or like right now or something? And I said, Uh yeah, I'm at school right now, but we can talk tonight. So I called her that night and she said, Oh, so you were at school. Do you teach, do you teach English? Do you and I was like, No. And I thought it was so cool. I was like, no, I'm a high schooler. And then she said, I'll never forget this. She said, That complicates things. And then she said, Can I speak to your parents? And I started crying. I thought that I had ruined everything. And I had to get my mom. It's so ridiculous. Anyway, they talked. And then she said, Okay, I wanted to offer you representation, but no, I think we need to get a lawyer involved because you can't sign a contract. So then I waited it more agonizing weeks. And we got this lawyer involved, and she had to give the book to the head of her boss, the head of the agency. And her boss was like, Are you sure you want to do this? This doesn't really make sense. And the agent said, Yes, I do. And then finally we got it all sorted. My parents signed my contract, and I had an agent when I was 16. And I've had her ever since. She's amazing. Her name is Anne. She now works at Tobias Literary Agency. And we went on sub with the pirate novel at the end of my high school career. And then no one bought it. And then I wrote another book. And she was like, All right, I hate this. And I was like, cool, okay. And then I wrote No One Aboard.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

What a cool story. It's a ridiculous story. I think it's amazing. And just, I'm so happy for you.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Thank you. It all really worked out. I was, I yeah, so it was crazy at the time. And but yeah, she's one of my great friends now. And I see her every year. We go on yearly retreats with all the other authors that are represented by her. And we're all besties. We we have a group chat. I'm in it every single day. And yeah, so it's been life-changing without even the book, without the publication, all that aside, it has been life-changing.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

That's so cool. Community is beautiful, however, we find it. Wow. Okay. So let's transition a little bit here. You already did talk about some of the things that are hard for you as a published author now. If you're in the spotlight and learning what what is that saying? What other people think is none of my business? On the flip side, I have a product that I want to sell to people. But aside from that, has there ever been a time when you really struggled with your writing when you had a moment where you were like, what was I thinking?

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Oh, yeah, I feel like there's more moments like that than far more moments like that than there are like this. Oh yeah, listen to my cool anecdotes about being a writer. But most of it was just me doubting myself. And most of it was me crying or reading something and hating it or deleting something or writing a whole book that I love and someone else telling me that it wasn't good or that it wasn't good enough. And oh my gosh, I feel like my whole being is made up of those moments. My everything, all of everything that anyone has ever said to me has stayed with me. And unfortunately, critiques stay with you longer than the compliments. That's just human nature. Yeah. I trying to even pick one moment where I had a few years, I think I had four years one time where I didn't write anything. And I thought I was I thought I was failing not only in my purpose, but just in I was so sad. It was just, yeah. And then the reason I ended up at sea on this study abroad program on the sailboat was because I was done with writing, because I was done with theater and I was at college and I had just had these really this really tough time with my professors. And also I was having a hard time with and not by her fault. She just, I couldn't give her a story that she liked. And I just, I felt, oh my gosh, I it was devastating. I was in one of the lowest places of my life. And I thought to myself, maybe if I just go in this sailboat and I study marine biology and I do something that is nothing creative and nothing like I've ever done, then maybe I can escape that. And of course, by doing that, that's how I found writing again. That's how I got the inspiration from my book and from my musical for all the things that have made my career. But yeah, the dark moments, they really stick with me and they have made me who I am today. And I think they have made me in the long run more optimistic and a little bit more Teflon skinned.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Teflon, I like that. Thank you for sharing that. Because it would be really easy to look at somebody who decided to be published at nine. Yeah. And has a debut out in the world in their early 20s and think this was easy for them. Yeah. Bullshit. It's hard. It's hard. For various reasons, right? For being attached to a dream and not having it come to fruition and finding what you think is the end of the rope, right? Only for the universe to say, just kidding. Here you go.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Here's another rope. Go climb this. And yeah, there's absolutely no success without suffering. And the greater the success, oftentimes the greater the suffering. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Totally true. Okay, you've written lots of books. So when you reflect back, what have you learned about dealing with doubt and all the things that tend to run alongside of that? Comparison, imposter syndrome, all the things.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

I think the way I would distill it after all these years is that I'm not qualified to deal with doubt. I'm just qualified to write. It's the only thing I'm qualified to do. I think I'm supposed to just keep my head down. It's not meant for me to worry about the outcome of things. I try to forget about everything. I send out a book and I then forget about it. I send out a query and I would forget about it. And I apply to a job and then I forget about it. I don't have any reminders or anything like that. Like my one job is to keep moving forward like a bull with the blinders on. And I'm not qualified to do anything else. I'm certainly not qualified to feel anxious all the time. I don't know how to do that well. So I think I just whenever I feel that and I feel it a lot, it's it's a stationary kind of feeling. It's a feeling that is meant to keep you in place. And you just have to move through it. It's like molasses, it'll slow you down. But if you keep moving, you will get out of it. Even though it's sticky and it's uncomfortable and maybe it'll affurt. But if you keep moving, you will get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah. Action begets creativity.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Yes. Yes, which is why the boat thing was so transformative, not because it was a boat, but because it was crazy. It was something I was really scared of. I was really scared of the ocean. And I was scared of doing something that I wasn't good at because I've always been good at writing and that and theater. And those were the things that I knew I could succeed in. But I didn't know that I could go on a boat. I didn't know that I could take a science college-level course. I didn't know I could do any of those things. And yeah, it's getting outside of your comfort zone when the muse is escaping you. Instead of trying to chase after it, just go do something that's crazy for you. But maybe it's something that you were still meant to do. It just feels a little less inherent.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

I love it. Just a couple of wrap-up questions here before we close out. What is a piece of writing or creative advice that you hold close to your heart?

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Write what you know, which is a controversial one because I don't think you should write what you know in the sense of only talking about what you could qualify to talk about. But I've written two books about sailing, the pirate book and this book. And the one I wrote before I was a sailor was laughable. And the one I wrote after I was a sailor is it's accurate. It's it's not only accurate, it's authentic. So writing what you know in the sense of, no, you don't have to be a pirate to write about a pirate. But maybe you want to go find a lake and hop on a sailboat and know what a halyard is or whatever else it is. Like I'm writing a book right now that's ancient Greek kind of mythology, and I don't need to go get a degree in the classics to write this book, but I do need to engage with other books like it. I think the more you can engage with something like your story, the more enriched your story is going to naturally be. Instead of trying to force, oh, I researched this thing and now I need to put it in there. But if you already just know about stuff, it'll just naturally and it's the naturalness that makes stories readers can tell when things are constructed.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Got it. Yeah, I love that. So I ask every writer who comes on the show, what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers who are out there, maybe in the slush file, maybe working on their debut, maybe working on one of the many novels that might not go anywhere. Just what would you like to say to them?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

I think you have to remember why you started writing. And the reason we start writing is because we are storytellers. And sometimes no one's listening to the story, but the story still mattered to you. And before we had all these dreams of thousands of people reading our books or seeing our books in bookstores or any of those things, it was just us alone in the room entertaining ourselves with the story. And I think if you don't keep that core, you'll get lost along the way because we can't control the rest of it.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah. Very well said. Last question: where can listeners find you and your book? No one on board. And then what are you currently working on that you would like to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yes, I'm all over the place. I unfortunately am very much on TikTok because I'm trying to get the book out there and my musical out there so you can find it. I saw snippets of the musical on the TikTok and it was cool. It was beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, that's at N E E M Y McGuire M-C G U Y R E. And then I'm on Instagram at emmy underscore maguire and at the legend and bonnie. If you want to follow my pirate musical, what else am I on? Twitter at authorEdni. And then my website is emymaguire.com. No one aboard you can got all those links all over the place. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

I will make sure I put all your links in the show notes. And then what can we expect in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 36:24

I have so much I want to do. You can expect my second novel, which I will be announcing and talking about very soon. That will be at the very end of 2026. And I'm hoping you can also expect the cast recording of my queer pirate musical. And I'm also working on my what I also hope will be my debut adult fantasy book. So maybe you can expect to see some snippets of that. I'm hoping to start a new Instagram account that is just me reading my work. So you can keep an eye out for that was full.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

You have been a delight. Hey writer, I'm back. Before we say goodbye, I want to take a quick minute to remind you about the Courage Files. I announced them in episode 100. And if you remember, it's going to be a new segment airing on the podcast starting in season four of September 2026. And the Courage Files is a collection of real stories from writers just like you about moments where you chose to show up and keep going, or hit send, or start over, or where you figured something out or took a brave step. Because courage in writing isn't about big dramatic wins. It's about those small, quiet moments that nobody sees but you. And I believe when we share those small, quiet decisions, it can create a ripple effect in the world and help somebody else make their own quiet decision to stay. It can help somebody else believe that they too can keep going. So if you've had a moment like that, I'd love for you to share it with me. And you can submit your courage file to the link in the show notes. And everyone who sends in a submission will be entered to win a free 10-page developmental edit and book coaching session with me. And who knows, maybe you sharing what you went through will help somebody else find whatever they need to dig a little more, to fight a little harder, to just keep going, so that we can put more stories in the world. Thanks for being here, and I'll see you next time. 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.