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#AmWriting

#AmWriting

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 Entertaining, actionable advice on craft, productivity and creativity for writers and journalists in all genres, with hosts Jessica Lahey, KJ Dell'Antonia and Sarina Bowen.

amwriting.substack.comKJ DellAntonia Art Gestion et leadership Économie
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  • How Writers Play Small Without Even Realizing It (Ep 2)

    How Writers Play Small Without Even Realizing It (Ep 2)
    Oct 19 2025
    In this episode, Jennie digs into the sneaky ways writers “play small”—circling endlessly around an idea, polishing the same chapters, getting lost in research, or waiting for perfect timing instead of taking real action. With stories from her years as a book coach, including one writer who finally broke free from years of fear and went on to become a full-time author, Jennie shows how smallness hides behind busyness and perfectionism. She challenges you to spot where you’re holding back and take the courageous step toward playing big.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. 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, we’re talking about playing small—and what exactly it is—because playing small is sneaky. Writers are not going around saying, “I want to hold myself back,” or, “I’m giving in to my fear,” or, “I’m making decisions to protect myself.” Instead, they tell themselves that they’re being realistic.Maybe they think that they need more training, or they need to take more courses, or they need to take more time. But as a book coach, I see the same patterns over and over again in writers playing small — and this is what it looks like.It’s this person, who I don’t see very often, but whenever I do see them—maybe once or twice a year—they always tell me that they’re circling around the idea of writing a book. It’s the same book that they’ve been circling around all these years, and they feel compelled to tell me that they’re still thinking about it—they’re still just about to do that someday, when they have time.The smallness comes in never even starting.I also think of the writer who polishes the same three chapters over and over again until they just shine brightly and there’s not one single, solitary thing wrong with them. But that writer never moves forward with their draft. They never actually get to the point where they’re going to finish, and then have to decide how to revise that book, or whether to take it out into the world, or even show it to anyone. They just noodle around with those same chapters in this endless loop of procrastination.So again, it’s not taking action.You also see this with nonfiction writers, or memoir writers, or sci-fi writers—where they focus incredibly deeply on their world-building or their research, and they have copious notes and spreadsheets and all kinds of information that they’re gathering so that, when they’re ready to write, they’ll have all this info—but they never actually get ready to write. They just stay stuck in the loop of research.Perhaps the most poignant story I have of a writer playing small comes from a conference that I went to many years ago. I met this writer who had been going to the same conference for about five years, and she was getting ready to pitch. She actually had come to me in a kind of speed-dating situation, where you worked with an expert to get your pitch ready before you went in to the agents to pitch, and I thought her pitch was really good. I thought her material was really good, and we worked on tweaking it a little bit.And then I said, you know, had she ever pitched before? Was this her first time? And she said, “No, I’ve been coming to this conference all these years, and I’ve been pitching every year.”And I said, “Well, what happened all those years?” And she said that each one of those years, she had agents request to send in her manuscript. She had this collection of agents who were waiting for her manuscript, and she had never sent it to them because she didn’t ...
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    8 min
  • The Bold Shift That Changes Everything (Ep 1)

    The Bold Shift That Changes Everything (Ep 1)
    Oct 18 2025
    In this episode of the Write Big series, Jennie unpacks what it really means to “write big”—not chasing bestseller lists or movie deals, but making the bold internal shifts that bring your truest work to the page. Through stories of writers daring to name their ambition, rebuild drafts, honor personal truths, and even reimagine entire projects, Jennie shows how writing big looks different for everyone but always comes down to honesty, courage, and clarity.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big Session—a short episode about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters. Today we’re talking about what Write Big really means. A lot of writers think that writing big means chasing splashy goals like bestseller lists or big advances or movie deals, and sometimes it looks like that, but more often writing big is a subtle internal shift. It’s daring to face what isn’t working, listening to hard feedback, writing the thing you really want to write, and letting yourself own what you’re dreaming about.I think the best way to explain it is to tell a few stories.So in the last episode, I mentioned my client, Dr. Diana Hill. When I met Diana, she had a full draft of the book that she was writing, and it was her third book. She was about two months away from turning it in to her publisher. She asked if I would take a look at the manuscript to see if there was anything that I might be able to suggest to make the book better.We were new friends, and I thought it would be a kind thing to do, and so I said yes, but as soon as I started reading the manuscript, I thought, uh oh. It was good—it was fine—but there was nothing special about the pages. Diana had done the thing that a lot of academics do, which is point to all the other thinkers who had gone before them and written things or studied things. It was all just a little flat, but I could tell that the ideas in it were really big. And so I went back to Diana, and I said, “What’s your goal for this book? Where do you want it to sit on the shelf?” And what I mean by that question is: what other books are near it, what other books are like it, what other books are your ideal reader reading?And usually, when I ask people this, they talk about actual shelves in the bookstore and books that are on those shelves. But what Diana said was something I’d never heard anybody say before. She said, “I don’t want my book to be on the shelf. I want it to be on the front table.” That was her version of playing big—naming her ambition out loud and allowing it to shape her choices. Because when she told me that, I was then able to say, “I don’t think what you’ve written is going to be that book.” And then I said, “How much are you willing to risk to make it so?”She looked at me sort of horrified, because she was really close to actually being done with this book, and she said, “I’ll do anything that it takes.” And so we set about working together over those two months to basically rip the entire thing down to the studs—if we’re talking about house-building imagery. I have rarely seen somebody work as hard over such a long sustained period of time as Diana did to rebuild that book. She did anything that I suggested if she thought it was right, and she worked night and day to build it back up. I’m recording this the week before her book comes out, and so we have no idea how the book is going to be received in the marketplace. But what we do know is this: she played big. She gave that book everything that she had. She was willing to ask for help. She was willing to sacrifice time with her family and even time at her job...
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    13 min
  • Write Big: Welcome to the Write Big Sessions (Ep 0)

    Write Big: Welcome to the Write Big Sessions (Ep 0)
    Oct 17 2025
    Jennie kicks off the new Write Big series with a conversation about what it really means to stop playing small in your writing life. If you’ve ever felt the tug to bring more of yourself to the page—or wondered why your words aren’t landing the way you want—this episode will spark reflection and give you permission to choose courage, clarity, and creativity in your work.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, and today, we’re starting something new. It’s a special series here on Hashtag AmWriting where we explore what happens when writers hold back, play it safe, or hide in the shadows—and what changes when they step into their full creative power. I’m calling these the Write Big Sessions.I’ll be sharing solo reflections, interviewing different writers and industry professionals about the ways they play big, talking with KJ about these ideas, and offering the chance for you to reflect at key times of the year, all circling around one big question: How are you playing small in your writing life? And here’s the good news: you don’t have to keep doing that. You can choose to Write Big, with courage, clarity, and the power to bring your whole self to the page.Today I’m talking about why I’m obsessed with the whole concept of writing big, and why I’ve committed my whole career to helping writers do it.In April, I went on a wellness retreat in Costa Rica, which was being run by Dr. Diana Hill, one of my book coaching clients, and the author of the book Wise Effort. When we arrived, there were the usual introductions—where are you from? What do you do? What brought you here? One woman heard about my work with Diana and said, “Oh, that’s so crazy. I’m dying to write a book. I’d love to talk to you.”I smiled and said something polite, because this is something I hear all the time. I’m a book coach, and whenever anybody hears about what I do, they always say that either they or their sister or cousin or brother or neighbor or somebody is dying to write a book. They say that 82% of American adults want to write a book. And from my experience out in the world, I don’t doubt it.In the middle of the week, Diana guided us through a visualization exercise designed to help us reconnect with our values and desires, and it was intense. We had to write for 15 minutes about what we would do if we only had a year left to live. We then had to write about what we would do if we only had a month left to live, and then a week, and then a minute.After we did the writing exercises, we partnered up with whoever was sitting next to us to share what we had discovered, and my partner happened to be the woman who wanted to write the book. I shared with her that if I had a year left to live, I would absolutely be writing a book to try to capture everything that I’ve learned throughout my career. I’m just wired to teach and to inspire others, and it’s what I would do.If I only had a month left to live, I’d still have that on my list. I imagined a burst of creative energy at the end of my life to propel me through this creativity, and of course leave me time to be with my husband and my two kids. We would probably watch silly movies and play games and fight about it, and we would probably take walks, and I would tell them how much I’ve loved loving them.When I got down to one week left to live, and then one minute, writing reluctantly dropped off my list because I had to face the limits of time and my priorities of being with my family. But what was interesting is that the woman who literally told me she was dying to write a book did not include writing on any of her lists.And to be honest, this didn’t surprise me. So many ...
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    8 min
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