#AmWriting

Jennie filmed this quick video message for everyone about today’s episode! Paid subscribers, come into the chat to respond! (Not a paid subscriber yet? That’s okay! You can become one today!)
#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Host Jennie Nash talks with novelist and journalist Caroline Madden about why writers crave traditional publishing deals and how that desire can become an unhealthy obsession tied to external validation and “pick me” energy. Madden recounts a 20-year path to publication, including losing two agents and dying on submission, then changing her writing through Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, Nash’s Blueprint for a Book, and Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook; her later two novels earned deals, including her debut The Marriage Vendetta (HarperCollins) and a forthcoming book.
They discuss how redefining “why,” setting a bigger North Star (for Madden, contributing to feminist issues), releasing desperation, and defining success concretely can stabilize writers through rejection and shifting goalposts. Madden advises seeking blunt, market-informed feedback from industry professionals and emphasizes control through craft and writing rather than chasing validation.
#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Books Mentioned in this Episode
* Story Genius by Lisa Cron
* Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
* The Marriage Vendetta by Caroline Madden

The Substack Exchange We Couldn’t Find — We Found It!
Blueprint Courses
👉 Enroll in the Fiction Blueprint Course
👉 Enroll in the Memoir Blueprint Course
👉 Enroll in the Nonfiction Blueprint Course
Transcript
Jennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. Hey, everyone. It’s Jennie, and I have a really fun episode today. I’m speaking with novelist Carolyn Madden, and we just had a fun interaction on Substack about a really profound thing, and we actually just tried to find our interaction, and we’re unable to do so.
So we’re going to have to recreate what it was. But the topic that we’re talking about is why writers, especially debut writers, but all writers, so desperately want traditional publishing deals, what that desire is, what that feeling is. And I saw something that Carolyn wrote [00:01:00] on Substack and, and just was like, “This, this.
Why is not everybody talking about this?” So we’re going to talk about this. So welcome.
Caroline: Thank you so much, Jennie. I’m really thrilled to be here, especially because, um, I have your Blueprint for a Book, a nonfiction book that I ordered. I suppose it must have been maybe 10 years ago.
Jennie: Oh my gosh. Well, that was what
Caroline: was- 10...
Would it be 10 years ago?
Jennie: That was what was so... Part of what was so fun was I- Yeah ... I didn’t know who you were, and I responded to this note. And you said, “Oh, I, I know who you are. I have your book.” And, um- Yeah ... and here we are. So that
Caroline: was- And you didn’t know that... Yeah, you didn’t know because I do recommend it a lot.
So I, I... That’s so funny. Um, so it’s a pure coincidence. And I will say that this is... There was like a turning point. Just to go back a little bit, I’ve had a very, very long, uh, trip, uh, circuitous, scenic route to being published. So [00:02:00] my debut novel, The Marriage Vendetta, was published last year by Harper Collins.
But... And it’s about a woman called Eliza, a musician. It’s based on a real-life character. But I have been working on some version of Eliza’s story for- 20 years now at this stage. So it took me more than a decade of actively trying to get published to get my book deal. And there was a pivotal moment where I was brought very low.
It’s like in a novel where you have your dark night of the soul. I had lost my second agent. I had died on submission twice, and I thought, “I cannot keep doing this to myself because I will end up an old lady with a pile of unpublished novels. I either quit now or I do something differently.” And what I did was I was like, “Okay, I’m not giving up.”
I went online, I ordered Story Genius by Lisa Cron, discovered you through that and bought this book, and I bought the Donald Maass book as well. And those three books were the turning points of my whole writing life, [00:03:00] and completely changed how I wrote. And if I hadn’t bought them, I would still be writing those pointless novels, Jennie, so I’m so grateful.
Um-
Jennie: Oh, my gosh. Wow. Yeah. So, so it was Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, and we have to get the name of Donald’s book, ‘cause it’s great and it’s ... I’m blanking on it right now. Um-
Caroline: Yeah, the one that- I’m just- I have a couple, but it was, um, the How To ... I have it here. Yeah, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. This one.
Okay. And the funny thing is, Jennie, I mean, last week when you, or the, whenever it was you contacted me, it was just such an exciting moment for me because that was such a pivotal book. But the weird thing is, and I just don’t know how this has happened, it’s like karma, I am now represented by the Donald Maass agency, but I never queried him.
It was completely by accident, and I just think there’s some kind of karma at work. I don’t know. Um,
Jennie: because I
Caroline: haven’t- This is
Jennie: crazy.
Caroline: It’s just gone crazy.
Jennie: It’s crazy. Yeah. It’s ... So more than a dozen years trying to get published, but [00:04:00] you- Yes ... but you write for The Irish Times, is that correct? You’re a journalist.
Caroline: Uh, yeah, so, and this kinda comes back to what I was talking about on Substack. I decided I wanted to be published when I was sort of mid-20s, like as a novelist, but I thought, “I’ll start small. I’ll just start trying to get some, um, some small bits and pieces published. Okay, I’ll try and write some journalism.”
I, I was working as a tax consultant at the time and I wanted to get out of it. And what happened was I did get some articles published, and then it actually turned into a whole career in journalism that went on for a long time, and I wrote for The Irish Times for a long time, all with the aim of getting a novel published.
Jennie: Wow.
Caroline: Yeah.
Jennie: So, um, I, I actually did a, a speed read of The Marriage Vendetta. It’s such a fun- Thank you ... kind of romp of a, a story. It’s- Yeah ... it’s, um, it’s very feminist Thank you. It’s, it’s, um- Yeah ... funny. It’s dark. It’s, [00:05:00] uh, satire. I, I heard some people describe it as domestic thriller. Yeah. Um, so this, this book has come out now, um, well, last year, and you have another coming out next year.
Is-
Caroline: Yeah ... is it
Jennie: in the
Caroline: same
Jennie: vein? Yeah. The same type of story?
Caroline: It is. It’s a little bit darker, but it is, I suppose, a feminist thriller. And so in total, I’ve written four complete novels. Two of them I wrote before discovering Story Genius and Blueprint for a Book and Donald Maass, and those two died a death.
They died. One, one of them died twice on submission, uh, two agents. The other one never even made it on submission. So I wrote two without this method, and I wrote two novels with this method, and both of those have got deals, so it was pivotal. But I think what we were talking about with Substack was I think I put something of saying like, it wasn’t until I stepped back and looked at this obsession that really
I [00:06:00] mean, it took over my life. It, it’s why I went into journalism. I put everything into it, and I’ve met so many people, aspiring writers, who are the same. It’s a sort of fixation. It’s an obsession. And when I hit that low point of losing my second agent, I thought, “I’ve got to figure out what is driving this,” because this is destructive in my life.
It’s actually an, an unhealthy addiction now at this point. And so obviously I thought, “Is it for the money?” Well, no, because you can make more money in practically any other line of work really, because I’d made no money from it. So- From being a lawyer ... so, you
Jennie: know. Yeah.
Caroline: Yeah, so it’s, it is not for the money.
Okay, is it, um- To get a- a- an audience, to get your message out there. Well, I’m a journalist, so it can’t be that. Oh. Um, and so what I did was I ... I was just like, “Th- th- this, it must be just for sort of, like, the validation.” So what I decided, and I thought, that’s not a very healthy motivator, because it’s never enough, really.
You get the book deal, [00:07:00] then, well, someone else got a bigger book deal. So I thought, I’ve got to get, have a ... I, this is gonna destroy me. I, I either have to quit or figure out a healthier perspective of it. So what I did was I zoomed right back out, a bigger picture. Like, let’s say at the end of my days and I look back and I think, “Yeah, that was a life well spent,” what does that look like?
And I thought, well, let’s say I have five novels published and they were okay, and people like them. Is that big enough? And I thought, that’s not big enough. And what was important to me at that time were a lot of feminist issues, gender equality, and I thought, if I could move the needle even in the tiniest way on any of those sort of issues, now that is a life well spent.
And so then writing a novel just became, that became my North Star. And then I thought, well, writing a novel is only a part of that. Okay, if I get a, uh, get to write a feminist novel with a, with a sort of subtle message, fantastic. It’s part of it. But there are so many other ways within my control that I could try at [00:08:00] least to- Contribute to feminist causes or those sort of things.
Um, so it gave me back a sense of control. It put things in perspective as well, and it also took the focus off, like, the ego. Like, I want to be accepted, you know? And it took the pressure off my novels, because I was fixating on ... And I know people who do this, and they say to me, “I won’t ... I, I don’t know what I will do if I don’t get a book deal.”
And I think, I kind of think now that I was so desperate, and I think that desperation can repel success. You’re clinging so tight to it, and then you end up sort of chasing trends and, “Well, that might work. And publishers like m- might like that,” instead of actually taking a breath and looking inwards.
Like, “What’s important to me? Like, what is the biggest moral dilemma I’m grappling with right now? What’s worth writing about? And okay, I want to get paid for my [00:09:00] novels, but I also need them to be about something important without being preachy.” You know, like, and the, the fiction is so powerful that you can, you know, suck people in with a story, and then they can go away with a different perspective if you’ve pulled it off.
And I thought, “Well, that’s the power of fiction.” And I think when I got a healthier perspective on, like, not just, like, fixating on s- the success of my novels, that’s actually when I got the deal. Um, because I think we put so much pressure on our novels to make our lives perfect. And then I had had a, a nonfiction book published in my 20s, uh, and I knew what the
And I had got to know an awful lot of writers. And I had seen that failure had been very hard for me, but I could see that success had been difficult for some authors I knew as well, because they might have had very quick initial success with their novels, but then maybe subsequent novels were not successful and they were struggling to get published again.[00:10:00]
And they were actually more devastated than aspiring authors who hadn’t got a deal yet. So I had seen, like, if you pin all your hopes on a book deal, it’s gonna make your life perfect, and it’s all gonna be worth it, I could see what was, what had happened to people who had quick, quick early success and hadn’t experienced, like, the brut- brutal rejections-
Jennie: Yeah
Caroline: and didn’t know what a difficult industry they were getting into.
Jennie: Well- You
Caroline: know, I
Jennie: said- ... first of all, I, I just have to thank you for your honesty. It’s, it’s unusual to hear someone be so honest about- Well, you’re using the word obsession and- Mm-hmm ... and that you felt it was what was going to make your life worth living, and you used the word addiction.
I think a lot of writers feel that, but they’re afraid to talk about how big and powerful those feelings are. So I- it’s incredible that you’re [00:11:00] doing that, and you’re, you’re using your Instagram and Substack to, to speak about these things. And I, of course, the reason it stopped me in my tracks was, of course, and I didn’t know that you had, had been reading The Blueprint, but the first step of The Blueprint is why are you even doing this?
And- Yes ... you know, it w- I saw you answering why on a bigger plane. Mm. You know, my question is about why are you writing this book, but your question was why are you, why do you want to be published in this way? And that stepping back, you were sharing how you step back and, and really broke down, well, what could be driving this?
And- Mm ... um, I, I agree that wh- where the writer sits in relation to their work matters, impacts the work. It just, it does. And- Yeah ... I see that all the time. I feel it [00:12:00] in, in my own self all the time. And, um, so I just think you’re doing a great service. Um, and I wonder if this type of conversation in your mind connects...
You know, you talked about you wanted your books to move the needle in this, around ideas of feminism and, and empowerment for women. Do you feel that these conversations are doing the same thing? These conversations about- Do you mean in the sense
Caroline: of- ...
Jennie: about helping writers understand their, their deep motivations and, and their, um, relationship to rejection and does it, does it sit in the same-
Caroline: I think so
Jennie: place?
Caroline: I think so because I think it all comes from You spoke about it in another episode that I listened to. It’s this pick me girl energy. Yes. We want to be the good client for our agent, [00:13:00] and even I have it in the book where she goes to a marriage therapist. Irish fe- I’m from Ireland, and we have this tendency if we ever do actually go to therapy, we want to be their favorite client.
We want to give the right answers, you know? And with our editors, we want to be the easygoing. We want to be picked. And so this was the opposite. This, these kind of conversations saying you have to be okay in yourself. Like, your worth does not depend on how many books you’re, you sell. You are still just as valuable whether you get a book deal or not, and there are things within your control.
It’s kind of like, what’s in your control? And that is, like for ex- I’ll give an example. So when my book, The Marriage of Indebted, did actually go out on submission, this was my third time on submission, and it had been so harrowing the first two times, uh, because it had kind of coincided weirdly both times with going on maternity leave and leaving my job behind, this strange [00:14:00] feeling of being invisible, and then we both failed.
So I thought, “I can’t go through that again.” And, uh, so I thought- It’s actually from your blueprint for a book. You had said, I think you had said, it’s probably from your book, that if you pick a sort of a, something that you’re important that you’re wrestling with, like an emotion or a moral choice that you’re wrestling with in your own life...
Not that my book is in any way autobiographical, but the emotional wrestling and moral choices. Um, and if you work that out in your novel, then you could end up with figuring out something more important to your life than a book deal ever could be. You could have figured out a central dilemma in your own life.
And so with each of my books now, I have done that. Like, I might disguise them with a metaphor, I might disguise them with completely different characters and even a different situation, but at the end of writing each of these books through that method, I come out with something more valuable than a book deal.
And I [00:15:00] genuinely mean that. I don’t mean that in a sort of, like, we should all aspire to this. Really, I have figured out difficult things that I have wrestled with. And so when my book was about to go out on submission, I just said to myself, “That book kept me sane writing it through COVID. It kept, it literally kept me sane, the focus of writing it, and I figured out a lot of stuff, how I felt about things, what’s the right thing to do in situations.”
And I thought, “This book really genuinely owes me nothing. Like, it, it saved my sanity and it’s changed my life writing it, and so it owes me nothing. It’s going out on submission, let it go where it will.” And I, then I just had this, I, I kind of genuinely meant it and I had this certainty it’s gonna happen with this book.
It was almost like, ‘cause I’d given up the desperation, I put no kind of pressure on the book, I just felt the certainty it is gonna happen with this book. And within a couple of days, I, my agent had sent it out in Ireland, the UK, and the US. Within a couple of [00:16:00] days, bearing in mind this is after 15 years of rejection, editors started coming back They were all intere- not all interested, but so many were interested.
We had so many Zoom calls with interested agents, editors. An editor we hadn’t even sent it to heard about it, got in touch, wanted to acquire it. Film agents, translation rights agents. It was just coming out of the woodwork. I don’t know, literary scouts heard about it, something. And then it went to auction in the US, and Harper Collins bought it, and then it was preempted in Ireland and the UK.
And I’m not saying any of that to kind of boast or stick it in anyone who’s on submission, because I’ve been through the heartbreak, but just to show that sometimes when you change your perspective on the way, on what you’re hoping to get out of your book, then actually the success you wanted comes along.
But I did feel, Jennie, when those, when that was coming in, it was that sort of destabilizing external validation, “Oh, I’m getting picked.” And I could feel that s- sucking you [00:17:00] back in again, like- Yeah ... “This feels good.” But it was that same sort of dangerous, addictive little high. And then if we hadn’t heard from anyone for a few days, I was like, “Well, where is everyone?”
You know? I, I want that high back again, and I want more of that. And the thing is, you can’t control what editor’s gonna come back with offers. You can’t control any of that, and the only thing you can control is sitting down and writing. And I always feel a lot better. Like, I feel like sort of healthy mentally healthy after I’ve written a good section of a book and I feel happy about it.
But, but the attention or the offers, it’s that old pick me thing firing up again. And then when that happens to you, you’re like, “I want it again. I want it again. I want more auctions.” It’s never enough. But luckily I was old enough, and I’d been through so much failure, and I had talked to so many authors, that I was like, “It’s okay.
Whatever the book does, it’s fine. This will probably never, ever happen again in my life if I get one book published.” I did it, and [00:18:00] hopefully it connects with some people. That was the main thing. Um, what does success actually look like?
Jennie: And when they... Yeah. So when the book actually came out, did you have that, a surge of that again?
Like, “Oh, I hope it sells X number of copies. Maybe I’ll hit bestseller list. Maybe I’ll get the film deal.” Like, did it, did you, does it go in waves?
Caroline: It did. Like, luckily I had had, um, that early nonfiction book that came out, and then another nonfiction book I edited, and I was very used to the experience of, uh, well, it shocked me at the time, but the book came out, we had a launch, we were in our 20s, so it was, like, a huge thing.
This cliff edge the day after the launch, like we never, ever, ever heard from anyone from the publishers or the editors ever again. Um, it didn’t, the books didn’t make any splash. So that was my experience with getting published in nonfiction. So I had very low expectations. [00:19:00] Yeah. Like, I think, I shouldn’t say this, but I think the first nonfiction book, I mean, it...
So I won’t even say what it sold. Like, it barely sold anything. Yeah. Like, we’re talking- Barely, yeah. I won’t even say. So then the second book sold a little bit more. Uh, and so I had very low expectations, but yeah, I could feel it coming back again. I could feel it coming back again. Um, but, um, by that, by the time it came out, I’d already got my second book deal, and it was a very, very tight deadline, and so I went straight into writing.
I just buried myself in the new book-
Jennie: In the new
Caroline: book, yeah ... um, to distract myself from it. But yeah, again, you do... You, you know what it is, Jennie, it’s that pick me thing again. I want to be the good writer. I want to be the one that makes the editors happy. Um- Yeah, I
Jennie: wanna earn my advance back. I wanna be the-
Caroline: Yeah
Jennie: publisher, yeah. Yeah. It never ends, really, you’re right. And what I so value about [00:20:00] what you’re saying is that so often the advice to writers is just purely about persistence. Yeah. Keep going. Keep trying. Keep submitting. Find another agent. Find a, you know, don’t give up, uh, you know, f- send it out- Yeah ... 100 times.
And- Yeah ... and you’re saying something very different, which is-
Caroline: Yeah ...
Jennie: change your mindset, and you can’t fake that. You can’t fake
Caroline: change your mindset. You can’t just say it to yourself. Yeah. Y- you can’t. And sometimes I, sometimes I say to my friends, “You keep going, keep going,” but I sometimes want to say to people- M- maybe, maybe you shouldn’t.
Uh, because I came across this quote by, I think it was Philip Roth, the writer, and somebody in the audience said to him, “I’ve been writing and I can’t get published, and what do you think I should do?” And he said, “You should quit, and if you can be happy without writing, well, you’ve won, you’re happy. But if you can’t be [00:21:00] happy without writing, then you should keep going.”
And so I do think you need to get something more out of it than just the idea of the book in a shop, and adulation, and bestsellers lists, and, um, proving people wrong. Even though I can say that does feel, that does feel good. But it’s never enough. It’s never enough. There will always be someone more successful with you.
And once you get the deal, then you’re just terrified of, of g- of getting thrown back out of the industry. So I think you have to take some control over your happiness back. Um, and that’s easy to say, but I also do f- I re- and I wrote a post about this on Substack, I really do feel like, um, there is way too much emphasis on perseverance.
And yes, I did persevere, but I didn’t just... Like, what happens with people if they don’t discover someone who can help them to improve, they will write... And I think the books are pointless, but the books don’t have a point in the sense that you describe in Blueprint for a Book. And so they will write book after book [00:22:00] after book, and they aren’t getting closer to publication.
So it’s not just, like publishing is not a meritocracy, it just does not reward effort. You know, you have to be constantly improving. You have to be learning your craft. You have to keep an eye on the commercial side of it as well. Um, so I don’t like when people say you just need to persevere, you just need to keep going, because the vast majority of people who are trying to get published will not get published.
And those that do get published, um, like I know a lot of people who have got published and cannot get back into traditional publishing, and it is eating them up, and it kills me to see it. And
Jennie: Yeah, there’s a lot of- I just think we don’t hear about that ... I know a
Caroline: lot of,
Jennie: yeah, I know a lot of writers who after a first or a second or even third success, their whole motivation is, “I just wanna keep being picked.”
Yes. “I just [00:23:00] wanna keep getting the next, you know, being able to do it again, getting the next deal.” They just wanna stay in it. And, um, uh, you know, it’s, the reason that your post and your message resonated so strongly with me is I have a very long history of, with this idea, and I had never articulated it quite as well as you had in that moment.
But I, way back in the day when I was writing books and writing novels, I had a, a three-book deal from a publisher, which for many people, this was after they published one, one of my novels. They, it was a three-book offer for the next three. And for many people, that’s, that’s the dream. That’s- Yeah ... that’s the top of the mountain.
But the amount of money that they had offered for each of those books, they wanted one a year for three years, and the amount of money was w- 100% not a sustainable [00:24:00] career. I would, I still needed a job, and then I would’ve needed to be writing these books at a fast clip, and I turned it down. And I, um, I sometimes, not sometimes, I often think about that, was that-
Caroline: Mm-hmm
Jennie: you know, should I have just persevered? Should I have just stuck with it? And but there was this sense of it wasn’t going to give me, uh, it was just, it was too little to, to give me what I really wanted- Yeah ... what, which was- Yeah ... to be able to write the books I wanted to write and, and be- Mm-hmm ... the kind of writer I wanted to be.
And that’s really what you’re talking about is the relationship- Yeah ... to the work. Um-
Caroline: That’s it.
Jennie: Yeah.
Caroline: That’s it. That’s it. Exactly, Jennie, because I think that’s such a brave thing to do because you’re actually thinking beyond just- The ego and what will sound great and what will impress people and what you’re supposed to do.
It always reminds me of, uh, [00:25:00] The Devil Wears Prada, and she keeps ... People keep saying, “Why are you sticking with this terrible job?” And people keep saying, “Thousands of girls would love to do your job.” And I th- always think that’s not the reason to do anything, just because a, a lot of people would take the thing in your place.
Um, and something actually back when I was reading your book, I came across I think maybe an interview that you had done. And, uh, you were talking about your book coaching business. And I think you said something like, “I loved being a novelist. Uh, but also I equally, if not more, am suited to and love coaching, book coaching.”
Right. Yeah. And that blew my mind, Jennie, because I thought, “No, that’s ... Nobody could prefer anything to writing a novel.” Because I think when you’re an aspiring novelist, ‘cause I say that to people who are trying to get published, and it ... I can see it’s really destabilizing because they’re kind of thinking, “Well, why am I putting all this effort?”
No, no, no. It’s gonna make life perfect. And I remember when I read that, it blew my mind [00:26:00] ‘cause I’m thinking there’s something better than ... You’re, you’re thinking I’m suited to it and I enjoy it more. So- Yeah,
Jennie: for me- ... how does that fit? ... the,
Caroline: the work-
Jennie: You know, it’s amazing ... yeah, the work of being a book coach used more of, of my whole self than- Mm-hmm
than writing alone did. And when I experienced that, I ... It, it was impossible to ignore. But the- Mm. I, I mean, it must be said that the real reason, again, your post resonated with me was I had these things in the back in my past, but I also have something in the extreme present, which is that I’m writing this book called Write Big.
And Write Big, the concept is, is about what we’re talking about. It’s about writing for yourself, writing with your whole heart, um, not writing to please- Yeah ... especially for women. Uh, not writing to be picked. The Pick Me episode you heard come, came [00:27:00] out of this. And, and I had, um, been on this journey with this book, um- And, and not really following my own lesson.
So in other words, I was saying, I was writing about not being picked. I was writing about tapping into what you wanna do and say and what the book wants to be, and yet I was wanting to be picked. And I, I self-published the Blueprint books, and they’ve done very, very well. Yeah. And with this book I had decided I wanted a traditional deal.
And so I- Mm ... went out and got... I hadn’t worked with an agent in years. I’ve had several in my career. But I went out and I found an agent who knew my work, loved my work, was excited to represent my work. We worked on a book proposal, which is what I do. I help people write book proposals. Yes, you... Yeah, yeah.
I... We, we wrote a fantastic book proposal. It was so good. [00:28:00] And, and we went out on submission and, and when... Just before I read your post, I learned that the 30th publisher we went out to had, had said no. Mm. So it... We came to the end of the line. We had decided we came to the end of the line on the submission of this proposal with this agent at this time.
And I was feeling that, exactly what you’re saying, that toxic sense of... For me it was actually embarrassment and some shame. Mm-hmm. Like, “I’m supposed to be the person that knows how to do this. I’m supposed to be the person that teaches people how to do this. Am I just a fraud now?” And I had given so much to the external validation of the whole thing.
Yeah. And I wanted... This is the real n- uh, nut of it. I wanted to be able to say the things that you’re saying- Mm ... from the place of having won. I’m using air [00:29:00] quotes, if you’re listening. Yes.
Caroline: Right? Yes. It allows you to say these things- Yeah ... if you got what you wanted.
Jennie: Yes. I
Caroline: totally agree. Yeah.
Jennie: Um- I wanted to be able to say, “Don’t have the pick me energy.
Don’t put your trust in the external thing. Write the book you wanna write.” I wanted that from that place of, of-
Caroline: Yes ... “
Jennie: Oh, this was my pure sense of it,” but actually underneath I didn’t believe it. And so I was- Yes ... just wrestling with this in my own gut when I read your post, and I just sat back in my chair.
Literally, I just sat back in my chair- Mm ... and I thought... I just sort of went, “Ah.” Like, “Yeah, I... That’s it. Just, it’s just needs to be a mindset shift.” And-
Caroline: Yeah ...
Jennie: but then the question... This is why I was so eager to speak to you. The question becomes, how do you know when- To keep hammering away at persistence.
Like, “Oh, I’ll find [00:30:00] another agent,” or, “Oh, well, I’ll tweak the proposal and try again and try again and try it again.” Or say, “I love this material. I love this book. I’m going to bring this out my own self.” Yeah. And I felt, when I sat with it, a real devotion to what I have written. I really quite love it, and I- Mm-hmm
believe in it, and it’s what I want to write. And it, I mean, ironically, the process of writing the right big book has forced me to grapple with these issues, uh, you know- Yeah ... in, in a really specific way of what do I really wanna say? And, and some of my, um, early beta readers have really pushed me, saying, “Well, you’re not doing what you say that we should do.
Yes. Yeah. “We can feel you hedging your bets. We can feel you giving away your power. We can feel you tamping yourself down.” Still
Caroline: [00:31:00] writing with an eye to the traditional- Yes ... yeah.
Jennie: Well, first of all- Or writing with an eye to not upsetting people or to not being seen- Yes ... as this or that, and-
Caroline: Palatable, yeah
Jennie: and so I’ve done- I would
Caroline: say- Yeah ... a couple of things. First of all, I really feel your pain. Especially, and this is what I’m saying, if you’ve already had success, you’ve been traditionally published, to publicly then not be able to get the thing you want is even more difficult. It’s not as difficult when you’re unpublished, because it’s part of the thing.
Um, but what I would say is it’s clearly difficult, but I think what you’re experiencing, and you are grappling with something very important, it’s the thing that’s driving us all and driving some of us mad, is this question of why are we doing this to ourselves? And it is the external validation. And I think when you figure this out, your writing will be so powerful because you will have figured it out.
Yeah. Um, and I met a woman ... And I mean, I talk the big [00:32:00] talk, but will I talk that talk when, you know- Right ... when things don’t work out, you know? And, and that’s me. You can come back to me. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I met a woman a couple of weeks ago, and it really blew my mind because she was really talking the talk.
Um, I was at a book launch, and I met a writer who was about to fly over to London for, um, the finals of a big new writing competition. There were editors coming in. There were gonna be agents there. And if she won it, she was winning a publishing, traditional publishing deal, and she was self-published. And I said, “Oh my God, you’re gonna meet so many agents.
Even if you don’t win, you’re gonna get snapped up and blah, blah, blah. Well, you might. It’s gonna be great.” She was so relaxed, and she said, “To be honest, I’ve self-published my novels, and I have figured out how to reach my readers and sell to them, so I’m not really that phased or bothered about agents.” Ah.
“Wow, you’re the coolest person I’ve met.” And I thought, “Wow, she’s so powerful because they don’t hold any power over her.” They’re just some people who might be helpful or might not be helpful. [00:33:00] And then I thought the only thing that matters is reaching your readers. That’s right. Um, and so f- it’s so true.
And when you, when I saw what you were saying about having a nonfiction book coming out, the first thing I thought, because I’ve been following quite a few people going through this on Substack, was, “Well, Jennie Nash doesn’t need traditional publishing ‘cause you’ve got huge platform and a lot of fans, and you could self-publish.”
And I was reading about Emma Gannon, who- Mm ... sometimes goes trad publishing, sometimes she self-publishes, and one of her book, I think she said it’s her most successful yet, the one she has self-published. Uh, and then I came across another woman who is, I think she’s a big influencer. She has over 200,000 followers, and, uh, her name is Danielle Leslie.
And just in the last week she has been, if you look her up on Instagram, she put up an amazing post. She said, “I’ve got this cracking idea for...” Or she used better language than that, “... for a nonfiction, uh, book. [00:34:00] I’m trying to decide whether to self-publish or...” And she’s actually talking about the exact things you were talking about.
She’s very intelligent, and she writes very well, and she, she got so much attention from literary agents. She had at least nine or more meetings as a result of this Instagram post, and she talked to a lot of bestsellers, and she weighed up all the pros and cons of traditional versus self-publishing. And she was like, “Yeah,” I think she said, “part of it is the validation.”
And she weighed up the financials and the pros and cons, and she’s decided to go with self-publishing, and she had to make that decision, too. Like, part of it is being picked Yeah, I
Jennie: think I read that post actually. It was quite long- Yeah ... and she had the details on the, the finances. Yeah. And yeah, it’s just such an interesting, um, place to, to be to confront your own, um-
Caroline: Yeah
Jennie: your own desire for validation. And, and that’s why what you’re saying when you realize that [00:35:00] it’s an insatiable hunger that will never be
Caroline: filled. It will never be enough. It
Jennie: will
Caroline: never be enough. It will never
Jennie: be enough. And-
Caroline: Because let’s say you, you got a big huge advance for this from a traditional publisher, then you’re under huge pressure to earn out the advance or else you won’t get another.
Jennie: That’s right.
Caroline: You know? Or maybe you will or maybe you won’t.
Jennie: That’s
Caroline: right. And it
Jennie: all depends. And, and the, the... It can eat at you. I know, I, I know people who, um, you know, well, I, I don’t want to, I don’t want to give any- anybody’s inner life away. But I, I know wildly successful people who are bitterly dis- disappointed when they don’t- Yes
make a certain list because they- Yes ... made it before. Because they, you know, they’re, the bar just keeps getting higher and higher for what makes it okay for you. And so shedding that and tapping back into this deep [00:36:00] why, I mean, it sounds like it happened in a profound way for you. But then that’s why I was asking, does it keep happening?
That you have to keep... Mindset doesn’t just, it’s like, “Oh, I changed my mind and now I’m fine.” Mindset is a practice. You have to keep- That’s right ... thinking about it. And so I’m curious, you said you were writ- writing, so, um, The Marriage Vendetta, again, came out last year, and it’s called The Village coming out in 2027.
Caroline: Yes.
Jennie: And you said that you started working on that book to sort of distract yourself from the launch of The Marriage Vendetta. Did you feel any of that- Well, this will get the bigger, big advance, or well, this will get the big movie deal. Like, did you feel that with the second book, or were you able to kind of hold it back?
Caroline: I have learned to not let it sway me up and down. Yeah. Um, because I [00:37:00] thought to myself, it’s very difficult even to get one book published. One book will satisfy me, and to be honest, for all my big talk, it did satisfy. It calmed something in me. It calmed and permanently fixed something in me. Um, it did prove something to me, and that was permanently fixed by getting a traditional book deal.
I will say that. Um- Oh,
Jennie: I love that you’re saying this. I love that you’re saying this so much, that yeah, you knew you, you knew you needed that and wanted that, and you kept at it. Yeah. And I wonder if that’s part of the answer of what I was struggling for, is how does a writer... Like, I know So you knew that you had to change your material.
That was a thing you did. When you got my book and the other books-
Caroline: Yes ...
Jennie: you knew you needed to, to learn something more about the work. I’m sitting in a place where I don’t think that’s what I need. I think-
Caroline: Yeah ...
Jennie: that I need to not persevere, in other words.
Caroline: [00:38:00] Yeah. Yeah.
Jennie: And so I w- And- I wonder how somebody who’s trying to decide which side of that equation they, they’re sitting on, how we could help them think through that decision.
Caroline: Well, in a very practical way, I paid people to tell me. I decided, and I mean, you could do this too. Anyone could do this. I thought, “Enough of this torture. I am gonna pay a former agent from the Madeleine...” Madeleine Milburn was my number one agency that I wanted to get to, uh, represented by. So I paid a former Madeleine Milburn agent to tell me what she thought, and I also paid a former Harper Collins commissioning editor to tell me what she thought.
And I think we need a lot of cheerleaders at certain points in our writing, but when the writing’s [00:39:00] done, we n- we need brutal honesty. We need someone to put us out of our misery. “Tell me honestly, am I barking up the wrong tree? Am I wasting my, like, years of my life on this? Someone please tell me, am I just, like, wasting my time?”
So I paid those two women, “Tell me honestly.”
Jennie: Do you
Caroline: mind- Uh ...
Jennie: do you mind my asking what you paid?
Caroline: Um, I’ve gone back to them since a couple of times. They’re not... They’re based in, um, one woman is from England, one is Irish, and so their, their charges or their fees are less than the US-based. Um, but these were just for, like, a query package assessment.
Jennie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Caroline: And so- The former agent said, “This will get snapped up by agents. The Voice, it will get snapped up.” And I’d never heard anything [00:40:00] encouraging before, really. Uh, I’d just died on submission, and the former commissioning editor said, “You are not barking up the wrong tree with this, but start writing something else because it might not sell.”
So I thought, “Okay, I’ll keep going.” And then, and then I didn’t get snapped up by agents, but she was in my head saying, “You will, The Voice.” Yeah. And I thought, “Well, she knows what she’s talking about.” So I think you need to stop going to Other writers. Not you, I mean writers as far as- Yes,
Jennie: yes ... you
Caroline: to... Yes.
Yeah. At some point, stop going to beta readers, your writing critique group. You need to go to the people who make these decisions with the market knowledge, and just say, “Look, I can take it. I can take the truth.”
Jennie: Yes.
Caroline: Just hit me hard.
Jennie: Yes. Well-
Caroline: Tell me to kill the project ...
Jennie: well, and this is the role- I’ll do it
that a lot of book coaches play for people, not that, that they’re in an acquisition role, but book coaches are trained to see and to help people decide when to go forward or not. And- [00:41:00] Yeah ... we can see so clearly that- Yes ... I mean, I have seen so many manuscripts over my career where- Mm ... people have come out of, this is one of the reasons I am not a fan of writing groups, is people will- Yeah
come out of writing groups and say, “I’ve been sharing this with my writing group for years, and everybody loves it, and, and we all think it’s ready to go,” and, you know- Yeah ... or my critique partner, or this or that. And then we look at it, and we think, “No, there’s, no.” No. It’s just there’s glaringly obvious things.
Like, people think that there’s, there are, I’m gonna say this wrong, is it objective things that are wrong- Yes ... with, with manuscripts, not subjective, and they think, um, that when if somebody’s saying, “I’ll persist, I’ll persist, I’ll persist,” they’re thinking, “Oh, that’s just their subjective opinion.” But there are objective realities to good writing that are very easy to see if it’s not you.
Caroline: Yes.
Jennie: Right? [00:42:00] And so the, a book coach- I completely
Caroline: agree, Jennie. Yeah.
Jennie: Yeah. A book coach can play that role for people at a, a much more affordable rate probably. Even just a very short, like you were saying, a query package, which is typically the query and maybe sample chapters or synopsis, and, and we can see.
And so that’s a fantastic piece of actionable advice, that don’t go to the people who love you, who know you.
Caroline: Yeah.
Jennie: Go pay someone who knows, who is in a position of bringing work to the marketplace in some way. Yeah. So because, and say exactly what you said, “Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is this- Yes ... is this ready or not?”
I, I just think that’s genius advice, and so many people don’t wanna take it. And, um, you know, you’re making me think of, of my own, um, of my own situation here.
Caroline: It- Yeah.
Jennie: But [00:43:00] Jennie, if I was- And, and I think that’s what I’m gonna do, actually. That’s exactly- Yeah ... what I’m gonna do. Yeah.
Caroline: I- if I was in your position, I would do what, and this is a strategy I followed for both my books.
I still got advice For my second book too because, you know, I’m not taking any chances. Yeah. I know how hard it is to stay in the game, so I got advice again. Brilliant and brutal advice. Yeah. And I took it. Um, and if I were you, I would pick your top pick of publisher, and then I would find someone on Reedsy or, or who used to work there as commissioning editor, and I would go and get a, like a, a quick, like
They could probably tell from the, the pitch and the opening few pages, like why is this not being picked up? Yeah. And they will know instantly, you know? Um ...
Jennie: Well, what’s interesting about my situation is, um, my, my agent did something unusual, I’ve never actually heard about it before, which is she had a spreadsheet and she shared the rejections with me as they came in.
Mm. And the [00:44:00] rejections were I would say, um, wildly positive. So, so we got some extremely specific and encouraging rejections. Um, and I actually recorded a podcast about it that will be going out before this conversation goes out. Um, I was, I was absolutely thrilled with the first five rejections we got. I was so...
I was giddy because- Mm ... everyone, they knew my work, which blew me away. Um, all these- Yeah, that’s amazing ... all these editors at all these publishing companies, big ones, knew my work, loved the proposal, understood what I was trying to do, saw the value in it. Many of them were saying, “Personally, I love this,” but the, the always the but for me was about being able to break it out in the way that they needed to break it out because I’m not an influencer.
I’m, [00:45:00] don’t have... I have a very strong platform, but not the kind of- Oh ... platform that they need. So in some ways- Okay ... I have my answer. Like-
Caroline: Oh, you have your answer, yeah. Yeah.
Jennie: I have my answer, and I, and I, I got enough validation that was specific, and I’m not m- I’m not making that part up because it’s, it was right there and, and I discussed it with my agent even, like, “Am I seeing this correctly?”
They, they loved it, right?
Caroline: Yeah.
Jennie: And you know- Yeah ... we, we were able to have that. So it, in some ways I, I already have that.
Um-
Caroline: You do have your answer, yeah, and it’s an unfortunate one because that is not your fault. That’s the market. But for me, I would be able to take that and say it, it’s nothing to do with my writing or me.
Yeah. It’s the way the market is. Unfortunately, you have to be almost an influencer to, or, or a celebrity to get an- Yeah, yeah ... published in the US. Yeah. Well, and it’s
Jennie: different with nonfiction and fiction, right? So that- Yeah ... I think that must be said as well, that I’m talking about a [00:46:00] nonfiction book and a, a very addressable market that I can reach, and fiction would be a different situation.
I think it is a- Yes ... slightly different reality. Yes. Um, but you can get information from the types of rejections you’re getting. You know, the, I call them the black hole rejections, where you’re sending out queries and just hearing nothing ever. That’s telling you something, you know? Yeah. Right there. Um...
Caroline: Yes. Yeah. Um, there was just one other thing if we have time that I was going to say that really helped me, and maybe it might help you. Please,
Jennie: yeah.
Caroline: Um, which is before... Because I had seen so many writers not be fulfilled by getting their dream come true. Because I interviewed a, I set up a little blog, and I interviewed a lot of authors, and a lot of the people who subscribed, then, to my newsletter were not unpublished.
They were published and struggling to get back in, and I was very aware that- this [00:47:00] whole thing of, uh, the moving goalposts would take away the joy of actually getting a book deal. And so before, when my book went out in submission, I asked myself, “Define success for this book. Define what will be enough.”
Yes.
Jennie: Yes.
Caroline: Uh, specifically. So that, because what could happen if you don’t do that is that success that actually will make you happy could pass you by and you don’t recognize it. Yes. So I got very specific.
Jennie: That
Caroline: is- And I thought- ...
Jennie: such good advice. Yeah
Caroline: I think so, because it saved my sanity, because otherwise you’re like, “Well, year time’s listing is all I want and nothing else,” and that won’t satisfy you either, ‘cause then you’re gonna try and do it again.
So my definition of success for The Marriage Vendetta was one person, one reader feeling seen, like someone else in the world that experienced the exact emotions they had felt, that they were like, “That, that is [00:48:00] what it feels to be alive.” And I thought, “If one reader gets in touch with me and says that, I’ve done my job.”
And I tried to persuade myself with that. I was like, “Well, we’ll see.”
Jennie: And
Caroline: have they,
Jennie: Caroline? We’ll see.
Caroline: Well, one of the editors in the whole submission process, during the whole frenzied month we had, um, the best thing that happened was one editor texted my agent and said, “It’s like Caroline has read my mind.”
And I said, “That’s it.” That’s
Jennie: it. That’s it.
Caroline: I didn’t even have an offer on the book at the time. I wasn’t sure it was gonna get published, and I said, “That’s success. That’s it. I recognize it. That’s made it all worthwhile.” And it really did help, because otherwise it’s like... And the other thing that really helped me, Jennie, was that I knew what I’m working towards, the bigger goal, which is, like, trying to contribute in some way towards feminism.
And there was another big book that was way bigger than mine. Took off in a huge way, and now the old me would have been eaten up by that. Like, “That should have been me. I’ve failed.”
Jennie: Yep.
Caroline: But that book had such a strong, [00:49:00] such a strong message. It was a beautiful book, and it got a whole conversation starting.
And so instead I thought, her success is my success because the bigger goal is tr- is women’s rights, and she had done that.
Jennie: Oh,
Caroline: isn’t that- So there’s no reason for me to be jealous ...
Jennie: beautiful. That’s beautiful, right? So for me, where I’m ... This has, this has all been about me. Yeah, but I love it. The whole reason I s- I love it
I wanted to talk to you was about me. So for me- But I wonder for
Caroline: you, Jennie, what it is. What
Jennie: does success look
Caroline: like?
Jennie: Well, right? The ... I mean, I always am interested in impact. My whole business of training and certifying book coaches has been about impact. And, and then I’ve had to define what that means and what that looks like.
And I ... You know, it sounds very grandiose, but I think we teach writing wrong. And, and by we, I mean our culture all the way into the school systems, [00:50:00] how we talk about writing, how we teach people to write, how we value creativity. I think there’s a lot that’s really wrong with it, and that’s what has driven me, is that there’s, there’s a better way to help writers- write their best books.
And you’ve tapped into it. You found a way, your own self, to tap into it. And what I’m trying to do is teach book coaches to help writers tap into it. That’s my whole thing, is really changing the way writing is taught and the way writers value themselves. That- Yeah ... that’s my motivation in everything that I’ve done.
I- I’ve been running this business now for, this is our 14th year, and there’s ups, there’s downs. And to your point, it’s not about the money. It’s not about the validation. It’s not about, “Oh, look at me. I sit as a leader of this business,” or, “I have this reputation.” I know from my own experience that [00:51:00] that’s, th- there, it’s never enough.
I could never get enough validation. I could never get, um, enough praise or PR- Mm ... or, you know, anything to m- Yeah ... to fill that hole up. But when I tap into ... When I say kind of grandiose, I mean, it’s a little embarrassing to say it to you and knowing that I’m saying it to a whole lot of other people who will listen later, but that I, I think, I think I have a better way.
And, and that the talking about these things as we are matters. And so for this new book, that’s all I have to do ‘cause that’s what it’s all about. It’s, it’s taking that idea to the next, a deeper level than the blueprint did, a, a more universal level- Mm ... in some ways- Mm-hmm ... than the blueprint did. So I, you know, that feels, even when I say it now, it feels, I can feel the relief in my body.
You know? Like, that’s ... It’s, it’s quite [00:52:00] easy in some ways to just do that- Yeah ... little shift. But, um, you know, easy to s- And- ... to say, not easy to, to do.
Caroline: To really feel it. Yeah.
Jennie: Yeah.
Caroline: But I think the difference between the two approaches is Our sort of need to be picked by the traditional publishing is kind of, it’s about our- ourselves and our ego, whereas what you’re talking about, helping writers, and your book has been transformational for me.
You’re talking about other people. You know, you’re, you’re helping other people. Whereas the traditional route is it’s very much like on the author, my book- Yeah ... my book has to do well, my reputation. Whereas what, what you’ve done is you’re helping other people, which is so much, this is so healthy, and mentally healthy, and, and so wonderful.
It has this lovely ripple effect out, um-
Jennie: Well, and I ... You’re giving me something I think I need to work on, ‘cause I’m hearing you today [00:53:00] literally say my book changed your writing career and your life. And, and I didn’t know that when we connected on- Mm-hmm.
Caroline: Yeah. It’s
Jennie: funny going-
Caroline: On, on
Jennie: Substack. Yeah. Like a
Caroline: full circle thing
Jennie: But, but part of me doesn’t actually believe it.
So, like, or won’t take it in. Yeah. I’m not sitting here thinking, “Wow, this is the biggest win for me,” or, “This is- Yeah ... this is what I live for.” I’m not feeling that. I’m, I’m sort of feeling like- Yeah ... okay, like I don’t quite believe it. And so that’s something I’m gonna think about. Because here- Yeah ... here you are saying that to my face and- Yeah
you know, you have no reason to be making that up. And, and it sort of happened serendipitously, and yet I don’t, uh ... You know? So I, that’s interesting to me to recognize, ‘cause you recognized when your reader told you the thing you wanted. You said, “That’s it?” Yeah. “That’s it.” And, and I am not doing that. [00:54:00] So that’s curious to me as well.
Mm-hmm. But, um, I could, I could actually talk to you every day about this. It would be- It would be enormously, um, valuable and helpful to me. But I, I, I think this is one of the most important conversations I’ve shared on this podcast. And I, I think the work that you’re doing both in, in your writing but in your sharing of your writing and what you’re, what you’re allowing people to see in yourself is, is just profoundly important.
And-
Caroline: Well, thank you,
Jennie: Jennie ... um, thank you for saying what you’re saying out there, for saying what you’ve said here today, for, for all of it. Um, so for anybody listening, you can hear- The, the depth of Caroline’s thought, and wisdom, and heart, this all comes out in her novels as well. So [00:55:00] you can read The Marriage Vendetta now, and in 2027 we’ll be looking for The Village.
And where can people find you on Substack and Instagram?
Caroline: Oh, yes, so it’s Caroline Madden on Substack. The name of my newsletter is Rising Tides Writers, I think. Uh, and on Instagram, I am Caroline Madden Writer. Uh, but I’m, I’ve had to quit Instagram ‘cause it’s too, uh... It wrecks my concentration. I can’t write when I’m on it.
But I love Substack, so you can find me there. Amazing.
Jennie: That’s amazing, and I will be there as a fan and a follower, and I just appreciate you so much.
Caroline: Oh, same to you, Jennie. You have changed the course of my writing life, whether you believe it or not. I will keep telling people and recommending your book.
Um, and thank you so much for having me on.
Jennie: Thank you.
The hashtag [00:56:00] amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Parrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of #amwriting, Jennie continues this series of “Write Big” episodes in which she vulnerably shares her own process of turning the Write Big concepts into a book, thanking listeners and inviting them to become paid subscribers. In this tough installment, recorded after a Zoom call with her agent while sick, she explains they are ending submission after sending the proposal to 30 publishers; feedback was largely positive, but publishers felt the book would be hard to break out without a large platform, and there was nothing actionable to change.
Jennie feels sad about losing the chance for bookstore placement via a traditional deal, but emphasizes she does not feel rejected and believes strongly in the finished manuscript and her marketing plans. She plans to move forward independently, explore formats and special editions, and frames the moment as what “writing big” means: taking ownership, not playing small, and writing like it matters.
#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey everyone, it’s Jennie, and I’m here to introduce a series of episodes that I’m going to be doing. But before I do that, I just want to thank you for being a listener. I inherited this podcast from KJ, Jess, and Serena back in December, and didn’t really know how it was going to work with just me at the helm or what I was going to do to make it valuable to writers.
And I’ve been finding my way, and I’ve just been so grateful that you’re continuing to listen. I appreciate it so much. I have a lot of really cool things planned coming up, so I hope you’ll keep listening, and I also hope that if you’re getting something from it, that you consider becoming a paid subscriber.
That helps support me and the producer and assistants who help me put this together, and we would appreciate your support so much. Okay. So the reason that I wanted to introduce this upcoming series is that it’s a series of Write Big episodes that are about me and the project that I’m working on, and it feels a little vulnerable to be sharing in this way.
I’ve had some mentors and advisors [00:01:00] suggest that maybe I shouldn’t do this because I’m here on the #amwriting podcast as an authority. I’m the book coach who coaches the book coaches and who has coached a lot of writers, and I come at you from that place of expertise. But in these next episodes, I’m coming at you as a writer my own self, and I’m coming with some pretty raw material.
I debated whether or not I should share it at all, but I decided to go ahead. I think it’s the honest way to show that I’m here working on the Write Big issues right alongside you because every writer is. These are not just theoretical ideas. They’re ideas that we all have to wrestle with. It doesn’t matter that I’ve published 12 books or that I’ve coached hundreds of writers and thousands of book coaches.
What matters is that I want the book I’m writing to be great, and I want it to make an impact, and I want it to be authentically me, and that’s what writing big is all about. So the [00:02:00] project that you’re going to hear me talk about is trying to turn the Write Big concepts into a Write Big book. And this episode that you’re gonna hear first is a pretty tough one.
I want you to know that it all turns out just fine. I’m fine, and I’ll be sharing the journey of my bringing the Write Big book into the world with all of you as we go with some special opportunities to be inside the process with me and to help me make the book as good as it could be. This will all just be a small part of what I have planned for the #amwriting podcast, but I wanted to give you this context before you listen today, just so you know what this episode is all about and the next few ones that follow.
Okay, now let’s get to it.
This is a Write Big session where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters. Today, I have a bad cold, as you can hear, but I just got off the Zoom with my agent, and I wanted to [00:03:00] capture this moment for all of you because I think it’s really important to capture it.
So even though it was a sad call and I feel bad, I wanted to record this right now. And, um, it was sad because we decided that our submission efforts are over and they didn’t work. My agent submitted to 30 publishers, and the overall feedback was amazing, as I shared in some earlier episodes. It was just incredible how many people know me, know my work how well the proposal landed with people, how seriously they considered it.
My agent did something that I’ve actually never seen before, which is that she had a spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet, and she would share the feedback in the spreadsheet as it came in. So I have all of the feedback in this spreadsheet. I’m looking [00:04:00] at it right now. And so what my agent and I decided is that there was really nothing that we could do.
There was nothing that we could control. Nobody was saying, “Go out and get a whole bunch of new followers and come back to us.” Nobody was saying anything about a different content or concept. There was just a general feeling that it would be hard to break this book out. I’m not famous, and I don’t have a big following, and I can’t get that.
I can’t snap my fingers and, and make that a thing. There are a lot of books in this category from people that do have that. And so I just am at that disadvantage, and there’s, there’s nothing that we could do. So we decided that’s the end of the road. So what I wanted to capture, the reason I wanted to record this was, this is a book called [00:05:00] Write Big.
And writing big in my mind- is not about going for it. That’s not what it’s about. It might be, and when you write big, you might do that, and what I was doing in trying to get a traditional deal for this book was going for it, and I’m sad I didn’t get it. That’s the sadness. I’m sad I didn’t get it. I really wanted this book to be in bookstores.
I feel like it’s a book that would do really well in bookstores, and should be in bookstores. That was my primary goal for getting a traditional deal, because I’ve self-published the Blueprint books, and they sell very well, and they do very well. And the one publisher that we spoke to commented upon that, actually said, “You do so well.
What can we... What could we do that’s different from what you’re already doing?” So that is an [00:06:00] interesting part of the conversation. But I want it to be in bookstores, and it’s hard to be in bookstores, really nearly impossible with a book like this from self-publishing. So the sadness is that I won’t have that.
And but underneath all of that sadness and the disappointment that it didn’t work is a belief in what I’m doing. I have a finished manuscript. I have it out with two beta readers, and I’ll be talking about why I picked those two and what that process was and how the feedback from them has gone and what I’m doing with that feedback in later episodes.
But I know that this material is good. I know that it’s useful. I’m excited about this material. My proposal had some killer marketing plan in it that I’m really excited to pursue without a [00:07:00] publishing partner, a traditional publishing partner, and some of the things that I wanna pursue will be easier without a publishing partner because I’ll have control over the pricing and special offers and giveaways and things like that.
But I... the, this book is not... this, this news is not the end of this book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just the end of this piece of what I wanted, and that’s the core belief, is that this, this idea is solid and sound, and I’m excited about it, and I wanna bring it into the world, and actually nothing is gonna stop me from doing that, and I feel a fierce, m- what is it?
Desire to do that. So I don’t feel like this is a setback. I don’t feel like it’s a referendum on what I wrote. [00:08:00] I don’t feel like it’s personal I don’t feel rejected. Again, I just feel sad because I had a, a dream or a vision of that, of that bookstore thing. But, you know, what does that represent? It...
What it means is that this book would get into writers’ hands, and it would get into writers’ hands in that way of, you know, someone wanders into a bookstore and they’re noodling around, and they are come upon that writer book reference shelf in which actually often several of my clients’ books sit. And which is kind of ironic.
One of, one of the re- uh, rejection letters actually referenced that they already have a book similar-ish to mine which is somebody that I, that I helped. So, and one of my coaches helped. So, yeah, it’s a little bitter- [00:09:00] bittersweet part of that there, for sure. But, you know, the ultimate goal is that writers get this, and writers use this, and writers make something from the content in this book, and that can happen whether they encounter that book in the bookstore or not.
So that is what is gonna happen. I will pursue this and move forward with this on my own. And, It, yeah, it feels, I’m just- I’m sort of closing my eyes and sitting here and trying to feel how I feel. I mean, I knew, I knew what was happening on this call. It wasn’t a surprise to me. It was, you know, we agreed to add the submission and to have this conversation today.
So I wasn’t surprised by the news. But, you know, having the call is, is final and the agent that I chose for this project is lovely and loves my work and did it- did all she could do. Um, I have no, I have no, um, [00:10:00] feelings or regrets about her role in this. And yeah, I feel a little, uh... What do I feel?
It’s, uh, it’s hard to know what you feel. Um, I feel a little, I guess vulnerable, uh, sharing, sharing this in what, um, will be a podcast, but I don’t know. I just, I’m out here trying to teach and to lead and to coach, and I’ve coached so many writers through this moment in different ways and different kinds of books over the years, and it’s part of the process.
I- I’ve been in the seat of helping someone through it many, many times and it it will be okay. I know it will be okay. And, um, we’re so lucky that we live in a time when the publishing decision is not the final decision. I have so much control and agency and choice, and maybe this is w- actually gonna be the best [00:11:00] possible for- thing for this book.
And I’m starting to think about, oh, maybe I’ll do a, a special kind of cover or a special hardback edition in addition to paper and e-book and audio. There’s so many things that I could do and I’m excited to, to do it. So I will take a, a beat and mourn, mourn the thing that I didn’t get that I wanted and move on.
And that is what I think writing big is all about. Again, it’s not going for it and, getting the big prize and that kind of energy. It’s, you know what? how can you stop playing small and write like it matters? How can you go big in terms of your ownership of this and taking responsibility of this and doing what you can to bring it to life?
And that’s always in our control. So that’s what I’m [00:12:00] gonna do, and I wanted to share that with you in the moment. So until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In a bonus #amwriting podcast episode, host Jennie Nash talks with academic writing coach Kathy Mazak of Scholar’s Voice (and host of Academic Writing Amplified) about how writers keep going after completing a blueprint and finish what they start. Mazak explains her mission-based work helping academics—especially women and non-binary scholars—publish their research by aligning time management and writing with an academic mission statement. She argues that big blocks of time are unrealistic and that one to two hours once or twice a week can be enough if protected and supported by project management systems.
They discuss common obstacles like not honoring writing time, fear of disappointing oneself, and harsh peer review, and emphasize mindset work as at least half the solution. Mazak describes managing multiple projects by focusing on a top three, letting others “sleep,” and “killing” stalled “zombie projects,” plus recognizing stage transitions and solving the right problem at the right level. She shares details on her 12-week Navigate program (scholarsvoice.org/navigate) and why members stay for years.
#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Learn more at http://scholarsvoice.org/.
Transcript
Jennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. Hey everyone, it’s Jennie, and I’m here with a bonus episode of the podcast because a lot of our community has been working on their blueprints this summer to begin a new project, find momentum for one that’s gotten derailed, or to work on a revision.
And obviously stopping to think before you write is critical, but then the question is, what next? And how, how do we keep going? How do we finish what we started? And I invited my friend Kathy Mazak to join me today to have a conversation about this and to get her insights on this topic. Kathy, we’re in a business mastermind together.
That’s how we met, [00:01:00] and we, um, immediately connected because Kathy runs a company called Scholar’s Voice, which you can find at scholarsvoice.com. She has an incredible strategic mind, and her work focuses on helping tenured professors get their research and writing out of the endless backlog and actually submitted and published.
So it’s a different kind of writing than we normally talk about on the podcast, but I know we have a lot of a- academics in our audience, um, who are trying to write nonfiction or fiction or memoir, but also probably trying to publish the papers that are sitting on their desk. And Kathy helps so many people do that work and do it well, and she has really Amazing systems for doing that.
And so she’s gonna talk a little bit about her program and what she offers at the end, um, or maybe at the beginning too. But, [00:02:00] um, welcome Cathy.
Cathy: Yay. Thank you so much for having me. So I know that we met in the business mastermind, but I’ve been following you for many years before that, and been listening to this podcast, and been subscribed to this podcast for, like, at least since 2019 when I started to, like, look at other writing podcasts.
Jennie: Yeah.
Cathy: And so it is ... It actually has been, like, a dream of mine to be on this podcast, so it’s, like, so- Look at us ... great that we’re doing this here today. Yes.
Jennie: I completely forgot to say that you have a podcast as well. What is, what is the name of that?
Cathy: Yeah. The podcast is called Academic Writing Amplified.
It has, like, we’re headed towards 350 episodes all about, like, getting your, uh, academic papers out there in the world when you’re a busy professor. So yeah.
Jennie: One of the things that I most like about your business is the way you describe it as it’s really mission based. Yeah. It’s, it’s [00:03:00] really about helping academics take control of the narrative.
Yeah. Right? Do you- Yeah ... do, will you tell us about that, ‘cause I love that.
Cathy: Yeah. So for me, right, like, as a writing coach, so I was a full professor, like I went through, I have a PhD. I, I, I got my tenure track job. I went all the way through all the ranks, um, before I left and started this, uh, academic adjacent business.
But I do it because, like, my big, like, mission is that the more, especially women and non-binary academics who get their papers out in the world, like, the more those voices are changing fields, and influencing research, and influencing thinking. And I just think, like, that is just so important. That’s why the business is called Scholar’s Voice, ‘cause it’s about getting more diverse, typically marginalized voices out in these research spaces.
Um, so [00:04:00] to me that’s my mission, and when I have ... You know, when, when scholars come and do my program they write an academic mission statement, and really their whole time management, um, and writing project management, and sustainable writing practice is designed to, like, support that academic mission. So it’s a very mission based, uh, business for me.
But it’s also, like, a, like my clients, like w- who take my programs are also, like, putting their academic missions, like, right at the center of their work. Which also puts writing at the center. Because to me, like, the writing is absolutely, is, is, like, the path to creating this better career, this focus on writing.
Jennie: Well, and an academic has courses to teach and committees to go to, meetings to go to, and, you know, so many other demands on their time. And somebody trying to write a book has- Yep ... not [00:05:00] exactly those things, but probably a day job, and kids, and, you know, aging parents they have to care for, and the dog, and the car, and, you know, it’s, it’s writing in, in the real world.
Mm-hmm. And the way you set your program up is you’ve honed this over so many years, i- and it’s designed to, to help people actually get the work done. Yeah. So can you tell us a bit about how you structure that program? ‘Cause I think it’ll be instructive to helping folks. Like, okay, here, you’ve finished your blueprint, now what?
So- Yeah ... how do you, how do you get people to do it?
Cathy: Yeah, yeah. So the first part is that I think that many people, when they think about writers, right, like if they just imagine themselves as a writer, they think that the ideal is, oh, I have like eight hours a day to dedicate to writing, or all my life, or whatever, you know, dreamy scenario we have in our minds.
And I [00:06:00] think, like, for academics, i- the, the... it’s like, oh, I need to be on a sabbatical, or I need to not be teaching. I need to... I cannot be doing any other thing. Um, or I can be doing other things, but I need like these big blocks of time to write. And the problem is, like you’re saying, like writing in real life, like that just doesn’t happen.
And then when it might happen for academics is over the holiday breaks, like the semester breaks or the summer, but that also isn’t true because you’re also like, you know, being a mom and, and th- you know, doing things with your family, and managing your house, and maybe your aging parents, and whatever else.
Like there’s never a time where there’s like nothing going on. So we have to stop thinking that that’s the ideal and rather think, like what I tell my people, and they- Fight me on this, but at the beginning. But I tell them, actually one to two hours once or twice a [00:07:00] week is enough.
Jennie: Ah. And
Outro: they’ll be like, “No,
Cathy: no,
Outro: no,
Cathy: I
Outro: need-” Say that again.
Cathy: Yeah, no. Say that again. One to two hours once or twice a week is enough, ‘cause remember, like, the low end of that means one hour a week, and the high end of that is four hours a week. And so a lot of times people come in and, and I’m, you know, for your, for the audience here, like, think about are you doing one hour a week consistently?
Are you doing two hours a week consistently? If you’re not, then let’s just, like, back up and go there instead of thinking like, “Oh no, I need these big blocks of time that I can never actually get and hold.” ‘Cause that’s the other thing, it’s so hard to hold a big block. Um, like a four-hour block is hard to o- to hold.
Uh, and also
Outro: hard- Oh my gosh, four hours? ... to maintain your energy through.
Cathy: No, no, people- What? No ... people have
Outro: all kinds of ideas.
Cathy: And I’m like, and, and the other thing too I think is related to this idea, like for my people, right, that the work day is, like, this eight-hour day. [00:08:00] Like, but you can’t ... I’m thinking you’re not knowledge work for eight hours a day.
Like, your brain can’t do that, you know? So we really have to start, just, like, dial it back and start with, like, can I get consistency? Consistency doesn’t have to mean every day. Could I get consistent with one or two hours once or twice, or twice a week, and actually do writing during that time so I have project management skills that mean when I sit down I know what to work on, and see how that works?
Because guess what? If you did that, you would be ... Like, everything would be moving towards publication, and there would be many more words on the page.
Jennie: Well, I love that so much because one of the things that I find is- Well, with writing or business or anything is I’ll say, “Oh, I’m working so hard, and I’m so busy on it, and I’m spending all this time on it,” but really what I’m doing is sitting down at my desk and- Yeah
rearranging, you know, [00:09:00] the folders on my desktop again. Or- Yeah ... um, you know, oh, I’ll just go take a little peek over on Instagram, uh, to transition from... You know, like, it’s just- Yeah ... I waste so much time. And-
Cathy: Yeah ...
Jennie: the- it’s- if the, if the idea is, “Well, I got one to two hours, I’m gonna, I’m gonna use that time.”
Cathy: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that’s why you have a blueprint, right? Like, this is why you do the blueprint because every time you sit down, you are faced with either the blinking cursor, right, the blank page, or you’re faced even before that with maybe, like, what do I wanna work on? And so for academics, we’re always working on more than one project at once.
We always have, like, most academ- some academics are book writers. Many academics are... Almost all academics are article writers, and so you always have... Like, you never just, like, start the research for an article and [00:10:00] then just only do that until it’s submitted and out in the world. You always have things at these different stages, like I call it your publication pipeline, but, like, you have things that are in the idea stage, in the data collection stage, in the analysis stage, the writing up stage, things that are submitted, you’re waiting to get editorial feedback on them.
All of that is happening all the time. So you, when you sit down, you’re making a choice between all of these possible projects, unless you have a great project management system, you know? Or unless you have a roadmap that says like, “Okay, well, here’s my roadmap. Let me... You’re my blueprint. Like, let me sit down and start here.”
You know? You ha- you need to have that place to start, or you’ll just wheel spin with those, uh, one or two hours once or t- once or twice a week.
Jennie: So I’m curious about what other objections people bring to your method. You said the first- Mm-hmm ... objection was, “Well, I, I need these giant blocks of time.” Yeah.
What are some of the other objections that you hear to it?
Cathy: Yeah. I think a lot of them, and [00:11:00] I think this is so common in, in writers of all kinds, is like, “I’m, I’m gonna let myself down.” Like, the, the, the biggest kind of mental thing is like, “Oh, I’ve tried it. I’ve tried to hold that time before, but I’ve never been successful at it, so if I keep trying, I’ll just keep disappointing myself.”
Um, whereas, like, the more structures and systems you put into place, the better those things can hold up those one to two hours once or twice a week, and then potentially grow them even. But you have to have, like, it, it can’t be just I put it on my calendar- Because there has to be, the mindset has to be in the right place.
You have to be honoring that time. Like, you- finding the time on your calendar is problem one for sure, like, because people are booked up. But the second part of that problem is I found it, I [00:12:00] put it there, and then when a student tried to make an appointment with me and they just couldn’t possibly find any other time, I put them right on top of my writing.
Or what many of the other possible scenarios where you would just schedule over what you had held for writing, and I think that’s a That’s a situation that’s common among everybody with a life, right? Like, “Oh, the plumber said they could come during that time, and here I am just writing.” Just writing. You know, like, that’s the first thing that has to change.
Like, you have to f- to honor that writing time just like you would honor that really hard to get dermatologist appointment.
Outro: That’s what it needs to be. That’s the level of honoring that we’re, that we’re talking about.
Jennie: I’m laughing- Am I- ... ‘cause I’m looking, I, like, literally have been thinking whilst on this, we’re looking at video while we’re recording this at how beautiful your skin is, so it’s hilarious that you mention that.
I’m like, “Oh, wait. Maybe I need to be centering the dermatologist more.” [00:13:00]
Cathy: Listen, I don’t have a dermatologist appointment. If I did, I would, I would hold that. The one that really resonates for me, and maybe with some other moms of, like, kids, like, school-aged kids, is the freaking dentist. Like, I can’t get a freaking kid’s dentist appointment.
Like, I call and they’re like, “Yeah, we’re just all booked up.” I’m like, “How is this possible?” You know, and so if there’s a dentist appointment, I hold on to that. That’s the kind of tenacity we want around the honoring the writing appointments.
Jennie: So I wanna stick with this concept a little bit more, because I, I actually was writing about this for the Write Big, uh- Mm
book that I’m working on. Mm. And this idea that the reward of writing is way down the road. It- Mm. We don’t really have any evidence that it’s gonna actually pay off. Yeah. And I think that that tends to be the reason why it’s so easy to say, “Well, this doesn’t really matter,” or, [00:14:00] “I c- shouldn’t really commit to this,” or, “I shouldn’t go all in on this.”
And some of that pressure comes from our own selves, as you mentioned. Yeah. But a lot of it comes from the people who love us, who are in our homes even, or, you know- Yeah ... the pressure, like, if you’re trying to protect that hour or that four hours in your week and it’s, you know, “Well, can you do this errand?”
Or, “This kid got sick,” or this. To be, to say, “Well, no, that’s my writing time”-
Cathy: Yeah ...
Jennie: it, it’s like, well, what evidence do you have that that’s worth anything? Yeah. Right? Is ... Do you find that with academics too?
Cathy: Uh, I think that, yes, 100%, um, because the payoff is really far away. Um, but even, like, I would argue that another thing happening in people’s heads is that the payoff might be somebody read it and hated it.[00:15:00]
Like, so you’re also avoiding it because- You know, like the end result might be that you, like turn it into your book coach, and the book coach says you have to redo it all. Right. You know? Or like- You missed
Jennie: the mark. Right ...
Cathy: you missed the mark. Exactly. And so, but like we just don’t think of that, or so that fear of that we’re gonna do this work, we’re gonna hold our writing time, which feels very selfish and feels like who do you think you are that you’re gonna hold time for your writing, you know?
Like, who are you, Ernest Hemingway? Like, like, you know what I mean? Like we, we have these thoughts in our head, and then we, and then, um, the, the great payoff of all of that hard work of holding the time and actually doing the writing might be, in the case of my people, like that some real A-hole reviewer tears you apart.
And-
Jennie: Because your- Yeah ... people have to have peer reviews- That’s right ... for everything, right?
Cathy: For [00:16:00] everything. Even books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everything is peer reviewed, and I mean, I was just coaching somebody yesterday on like why are, why we have, I call it like submission friction. Like I talk about all these different points in the writing process, and how- Every point, there’s like, there’s friction to move the work from one kind of thing to another kind of thing.
So there, like when you go from draft to like submitted article, y- it’s becoming something different, and your job and your relationship to the, that piece of writing is different between when you’ve drafted it and when you’ve submitted it to a journal. Um, there’s lots of other transition points, but I was coaching somebody yesterday who was like, “Yeah, I got all this really bad feedback,” like really badly worded feedback, right?
Like, it wasn’t just critical, it was also delivered poorly because peer review in academia is blind, so you don’t know who read it, and so people say all kinds of things [00:17:00] without you, you know, without fear that you’re g- they’re gonna see you at a conference. So you know, supposedly they don’t know who you are, you don’t know who they are.
And it can be like really horrible, and this, this client, she was like, “I just can’t... I have trouble, I’m having trouble submitting anything from that study because that person’s words are in my head.” Oh. So like, so we also have like for the great effort of holding the writing time and doing, we might get these terrible things that like stop us in our tracks, and then we have to like coach our own minds through like, okay, why is it true that submitting again won’t necessarily have those same results, you know, and whatever else you need to, you know...
Like I work with my clients on different things they can think to get over that friction of submitting and that fear. But, but yeah, like sometimes there’s a payoff, and sometimes the payoff is like, “Congratulations, we’re g- people are really mean.”
Jennie: [00:18:00] Yeah. Yeah,
Cathy: yeah. Yeah,
Jennie: so how much time do you spend in your program, would you say, on You know, so there’s the tactics and the- Mm-hmm
setting up the systems- Yeah ... versus mindset. Yeah. Like, what’s the balance?
Cathy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So my program is set up so that you do the program in 12 weeks, and guess how long it takes to do the program every week? One to two hours. And you do it once or twice a week. So, like, if you take the program, it forces you to hold, like, an hour to do the material and an hour for a live call.
So the live call is where we’re really getting into the coaching stuff. Like, I, you know, there’s only so much coaching you can do on, like, a prerecorded lesson, right? But we do talk about mindset, um, throughout the whole thing. But on the coaching calls is really when we talk about mindset and, and get to figure out, like, [00:19:00] is the problem that you’re having actually a strategy problem, or are you having a mindset problem?
Is it, like, something that’s happening, or is it the way you’re thinking about what’s happening? So I would say it’s, like, a half and half, um, kind of breakdown between strategies and, um, techniques and, like, here’s processes, and let’s get your mind right.
Jennie: Well, I mean, that’s, to me, a, a giant revelation. I, I believe that mindset is at least 50% as well.
Yeah, yeah. And I think most writers don’t have any idea that, how important mindset is. And the program you and I are in together, the business mastermind that we’re in together, is hugely mindset focused, and it- Yeah ... it’s hard to show up with your mindset stuff. It’s embarrassing. Mm. Mm. And, you know, it’s hard to get coaching on it, at least for me anyway, because it’s, oftentimes it’s like, “You’re saying the same thing in a different way.
[00:20:00] Like, that’s just the same story, different words,” you know? You really have to confront the narratives that you have in your head, and where they came from, and what they’re serving, and that’s work too, right? Yeah,
Cathy: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah,
Jennie: absolutely. And I mean, that’s, to me, the thing that I’ve, I’ve really learned, and your program honors that idea by half the time that people are spending is the, the mindset.
Cathy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and then we also... Like, the program is designed so that you take it once, and then you can keep taking additional rounds of the program. The content of the program doesn’t change, but you continue to have these mi- these, these coaching calls, right? Where we talk about, there’s kind of two part- like, two themes of the coaching calls.
Like, one theme is like, oh, now I- my whole calendar is really mission aligned, and I’m holding my writing time and whatever. And then what is the series of problems that happens after that, [00:21:00] right? Like, what’s the next level? Like, now that we’ve solved these things, ‘cause there’s never no, there’s never no problems.
Like, like, the next set of problems, uh, presents itself. Um, so we coach on those things. But also, like, I’ve just been, especially this, in this next group, I’ve told people, like, I’m like, “We’re gonna do more mindset than ever.” Like, we’re just gonna really coach your brains on, um, you know, on perfectionism, on procrastination, on transition friction, on zombie projects, on like, um-
Jennie: What’s a zombie project?
Cathy: Ooh, those are those things that are like, they’re not going anywhere. They’re dead, but you’re holding onto them in your mind, like someday I’m gonna get back to that. And it is not healthy to do that. So we, I, when I talk about, like, um, how to manage multiple projects at once, like so think multiple articles that you’re writing at once, people [00:22:00] have...
Like, academics have, I don’t know, like 10, 20 articles that they have, like that they’re holding in their mind as like these are possible articles that I could work on or these are projects that... I call them projects in play, right? Well, a lot of times like five of those are like, “Oh, this is a project I started.
There might be words on the page, but it stalled out.” We needed to do a reanalysis, and we didn’t n- and, and it was gonna be a lot of work to go back and do that, so it’s just kind of like alive but dead, right? Like a zombie. Yeah. So I tell people, and again, they fight me on this, like I’m like, “You need to kill them.”
Like you need... Zombie projects aren’t for resuscitating. They are for blessing and releasing. They are for like this is done. This is not going to... Because they’re in the way of all of the other living projects. So I talk about the projects as like we have a top three that are kind of, that we’re maybe rotating between or [00:23:00] that like once we, we, we submit something from the top three we can like promote something else, and then everybody else is sleeping.
You know? Just tell them they need to take a nap. And then the zombie projects we’re just, we kill them. You can, if you must, have a folder on your computer and put them there, but you need to get them out of like your working mind. They shouldn’t be in your pipeline. They should be like they... Because we can only hold so many things, and we can only manage so many projects at once, so we have to create systems and processes to make it feel like we’re only working on one thing at a time
Jennie: Well, I think this idea, which I adore now that I know what it is-
um, applies to book writers as well. Everybody has more than one book idea, and they have the book idea that they wanna write after the book that they’re working on, or they started three at a time or s- you know, oftentimes there’s a thing that happens, I think it happens about two-thirds of the way through a [00:24:00] book- Hmm
where suddenly you have a great idea for another book that is shinier and prettier and brighter and better- Yes ... than the one you’re working on.
Outro: Yep.
Jennie: And so this idea, I think, really applies to book writers, and most of us who are writing and sharing anything are also writing other content like- Yes. Yes
Substack and, um, or a newsletter or a podcast or whatever th- whatever the content that we’re working on is. So do you think that this idea of the zombie project- Mm-hmm ... or folder can apply there as well?
Cathy: For sure, because here’s the thing, right? The shiny object syndrome is really real be- and it, and it relates actually to the submission friction that I was talking about.
Like, I did a call about that just yesterday. Like, it relates because- Before your project is done, right, before it’s submitted, before it’s turned in, whatever, [00:25:00] it has the potential to be the very most amazing, best book that has ever been written by anyone. And as long as I don’t submit it, it is holding that potential.
Jennie: Yes. Okay.
Cathy: And so once the, so the more, but the more done the book gets, the less po- Like, almost like the less that po- the, the more that potential is kind of decreasing because it, it’s not that it’s not great, maybe it is that book, but like the potential of what it could become when it actually has become something is less, right, than the new shiny idea because the new shiny idea then has like all of this potential.
So, so I think that’s the, the newness of something like is, i- is very attractive, and it has so much to do with like our brains trying to avoid the hard work of the finishing and trying to... Like, [00:26:00] w- when something is new, you don’t know what the writing problems are yet. Yeah. But what, what’s existing, you have a lot of problems to solve.
There’s a ton of decisions to make.
Jennie: Yeah.
Cathy: And, um, and, and that, that feels hard and heavy.
Jennie: So for our listeners who are finishing up their blueprints, they’re coming across one of those friction points you talked about, where you’re going from planning your book, thinking about it, solving some problems, to you’re going back to writing ‘cause the- Yeah
blueprint is a kind of a pause. Not kind of, it’s a pause, and now you’re going back to the writing, and that s- transition is something a lot of writers don’t acknowledge- that it’s a different thing. So that idea- Right ... you were talking about of, um, when your academic writers are shifting from, you know, one thing to another.
They have a lot more shifts in a lot [00:27:00] more compressed period of time. But writers absolutely go through this, and then when they, when they call it done and get it to beta readers, and then they get it back and get it to, you know, going to pitch, those are all transition points. So a lot of our listeners are at one of those right now.
Yeah. What is, what is the mindset work to, that you guide people for shifting from one, um, process to another?
Cathy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So your job changes. Like, that’s the, that, that’s the, you know ... Like, the job of, like, when you’re doing the blueprint, right? It’s a planning, it’s a pausing, it’s a thinking, it’s a
Right? The same thing we do, like, I teach a writing planning process, and that process is one kind of job, right? The job of, like, making decisions- And executing on those decisions. So the making decisions is another job, and the [00:28:00] executing on the decisions is another job. So just realizing, like, what is my job in this moment, that is a really powerful thing to think about and think like, “No, in the scope of this whole project, my job right now is to make decisions that then I can execute on.”
Jennie: Yes.
Cathy: And also... Yes. And not, and remember then, like, you execute on the decisions, and you might have to go back and make new decisions and execute differently. Like, that’s what composition, that’s what composing is, right? But you, you know, keep the job that you’re, for the stage that you’re at, and stop trying to solve the problems of another stage in the process.
Jennie: So bleeding into other jobs sounds like it’s a energy suck. So for, uh, a, somebody finishing the blueprint, it might be, “Well, now I’m gonna start researching agents and conferences I can go to to pitch at.” And it’s like, “No, you gotta write the book,” right? Yes. Is that-
Outro: Exactly, [00:29:00] exactly ...
Jennie: is that the kind of thing- Yes
yeah.
Cathy: Yeah, and so, like, a- and it’s also, I talk a- I talk in the program about, like, you’re solving the wrong problem at the wrong level, right? Like, that’s an in- perfect example of I’m solving the wrong problem. Like, I don’t, I don’t need to be, like, thinking about pitching agents. I need to be figuring out what my book idea is.
Like, you know what I mean? And so for, like, in, in, in our, in my program, there’s, you know, let’s say I think that what I have is a writing time problem, but if I don’t have writing project management, like if I don’t know how to plan a paper and I don’t know what the stages it needs to go through are, and I don’t know how to manage it in relation to other papers that I have, I can have two hours of writing, and I will sit there and not know what to do with it.
Jennie: Yes.
Cathy: So, like, there has to be, you know, you ha- so solving, you have to solve the right problem. You know? Like I, okay, I have a backlog of papers. I think it’s ‘cause I don’t have enough time. Like, you probably don’t have enough time, but that’s not the [00:30:00] only problem, you know? And that might not be the most pertinent problem to solve first.
Jennie: Right. I love this. I love this for our people finishing Blueprint. Um, and w- I’m curious just to sort of wrap up our conversation, why do you think... ‘Cause something that’s remarkable about the program that you run, which is again at scholarsvoice.com-
Cathy: It’s actually .org, but yeah
Jennie: Oh, dang.
Outro: Dot org.
Jennie: I said it wrong. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Scholarsvoice.org. We’ll put it down in the show notes. It’ll go in the show notes. Yeah. Um, well, the remarkable thing is that people love your program. Like, once they find it, they don’t leave. Yeah. They, they stay for a long time. Years. Yeah. Years and years and years.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do you think that is?
Cathy: Because we’re never done. We’re never done as writers.
Jennie: Yeah.
Cathy: Right? Like, we’re always developing, and we’re always [00:31:00] changing, and we’re always responding to new situations. And I just think, like, I think it would be terrible to think, like, “I’ve learned how to write a novel or a book or an article, and now I’m done.
Like, and now I just, like, rinse and repeat for 30 years.” Like, no, that’s not how it works. First of all, it’s just not how it works, and also, would you really want it to work like that? Don’t you want it to get more interesting, different, better? Like, and so that’s why people stay, ‘cause the, the, the curriculum is...
I- it’s called, like, a spiral curriculum, where you could just, like, keep doing it again and again. And as you are going through your career, you are changing, and your situation is changing, and actually the demands of your career are changing. And so you can just continue to do this work over and over again, and, and many people do it and then come back after they’ve had, like, a little career change, and they realize, “Ooh, now all of these things have [00:32:00] shifted, and I need to, like, go back and figure all of this out again.”
And that’s normal and natural and fine and actually amazing.
Jennie: Um, so how can... If people are listening to this, and they’re like, “Wait, I wanna get in on this academic writing-” Yeah ... thing, I... So it’s only for tenured professors. It’s not- So- ... for people who want to be that, right? No.
Cathy: Yeah, so we... It is really for academics.
It’s really geared towards people who are in academic careers, tenured or hoping, you know, tenure-track professors or whatever they call it in the country that you live in, ‘cause it’s called different things. Um, it- we have a lot of people who are mid-career. Like, so it’s not just for early career. Um, but we, we have people at all different career stages, including post-docs, including full-time researchers, and so...
And even sometimes people from industry, like, or nonprofit who are doing research work and need to put out publications [00:33:00] into academic journals. So yeah, and you can go to scholarsvoice.org, and at the top navigation it says, “Publish your backlog,” and that is my Navigate program, which is really focused on helping you publish that backlog of papers and keep papers, like, flowing out into the world.
Um, scholarsvoice.org/navigate is where you’ll find all the information, and you can apply, and it’s open until, open for applications until August 28th.
Jennie: That is awesome. Well, if you’re, if you’re listening, um, now and that speaks to you, you can jump on that. If you’re listening in the future, uh, there will be another opportunity, uh, to get into- Yeah
Cathy’s program. And if you’re listening to the hashtag amwriting, uh, podcast and you’re not an academic, and- You’re finishing a blueprint or you’re realizing after this conversation, “Gosh, I’m doing the wrong job at the wrong [00:34:00] time,” or, “I don’t have a time problem, I have a mindset problem,” or any of these, these ideas that Cathy has shared with us.
Put them into practice and, and I think that for writers listening to podcasts like this is part of the mindset work because- Yes ... you’re listening to bigger conversations and bigger ideas, and you’re getting something in your ear that counteracts that story you’re telling your own self. So, um, I’m just grateful for you, Cathy, for sharing those stories and thoughts with us today, and for doing this amazing work that you’re doing out in the world.
So thank you for joining us.
Cathy: Thank you for having me on the podcast.
Jennie: And for our listeners, thanks for being here. Now let’s get back to work and finish what matters most.
Outro: The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, [00:35:00] aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Jennie Nash introduces an upcoming series of Write Big episodes that share her vulnerable, behind-the-scenes process of turning Write Big concepts into a Write Big book, thanking listeners and inviting paid subscriptions. In this episode, she revisits her “don’t wait to be picked” stance while confronting her own feelings as her book submission process stretches seven or eight months with rejections.
She examines the discomfort beneath wanting to be chosen—entitlement and exceptionalism, loneliness and the desire for an ally, embarrassment about ambition, doubts tied to leadership and authority, and the burden of carrying the project alone if she isn’t picked. Jennie argues that whether writers are picked or not, the creative road is still hard and what matters is one’s response, which she frames as the core of writing big.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe