#AmWriting

Jennie Nash interviews author Meghan P. Brown about her journey from picture-book nonfiction to selling her first middle-grade novel, after participating in the 2022 Blueprint Challenge. Brown began the project in 2019, drafted it during her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, then used the Blueprint framework to “reverse engineer” the manuscript and discover it lacked plot;...

Every summer, we promise ourselves the same thing: This is the summer I finally make real progress on my book. But then July hits. The kids are home, vacations get scheduled, or you sit down at the laptop and realize you aren’t entirely sure what your manuscript actually needs next. Do you need to write more words? Toss out the middle? Start a major revision?

I...

Jennie Nash introduces a hot seat coaching episode where Author Accelerator coaches Stuart and Margaret work through Margaret’s new Blueprint for a historical novel set in Florence in the 1400s. Stuart helps Margaret pressure-test the story engine by differentiating two opposing forces—an Alchemist experimenting with mercury-based syphilis treatments and Savonarola (whom Stua...

In a hot seat coaching session on the #amwriting podcast, Jennie Nash coaches Brenna Humphries on a nonfiction proposal for Where It Hurts: A Couple’s Guide to Kicking Prostate Cancer, noting a disconnect between the proposal’s tone/claims and the sample chapters. They discuss how “salesy” positioning and language that can read as antagonistic toward the medical system may cr...

We’ll be reviewing submissions LIVE on the podcast. This time, we’re goi...