✨Don't Force it, Seduce it: Lessons on Prose✨
Plus, there's still time to sign up for the summer's last Beta Reader Match Up!
Happy Friday, writing friends!
This week is a 📕Books with Hooks🪝segment on the podcast in which the hosts tackle TWO standout queries! 🤩 You’re definitely not going to want to miss their critiques in next Tuesday’s edition!
Then, we have a wonderful essay penned by Maria Giesbrecht, author of A Little Feral that’s titled Don’t Force It, Seduce It: Lessons on Prose from a Poet’s Bedside. We love what she has to say about the foreplay of the craft:
“A runner doesn’t attempt a marathon without stretching. A musician doesn’t walk onstage without tuning their instrument. Yet, writers often sit down at a cluttered desk under buzzing fluorescent lights and wonder why the sentences feel like gravel. We hear the advice “just write every day.” So when that doesn’t happen in every circumstance we hope it will, we’re disappointed.
What if we chose to begin with our bodies already relaxed, open, and ready to receive? This is what I call the “foreplay” of the craft.”
And about the afterglow:
“Ultimately, prose, just like poetry, can be wooed until it becomes warm and malleable under our fingertips. This starts with replacing a demand with a welcome.”
Want to make some new writing friends this summer while you have some time off to sit your butt in a chair and write? Then don’t miss signing up for Bianca’s Beta Reader Match Up which will be the last one of the summer. Scroll down for further details!
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
P.S. Still not sure about upgrading to paid? Check out our Tuesday Teaser below to see what you’re missing!
This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨
On this week’s Books with Hooks, Carly and CeCe talk about two standout queries. One delivers a polished, compelling YA pitch with strong writing and commercial appeal, but raises a big question. The other hooks with voice and literary edge, but struggles with clarity—multiple storylines, shifting tones, and an unclear inciting incident leave agents searching for the core. On the page, both authors shine. We talk sneaky prologues, elevated voice in YA, and the balance between internal vs. external stakes. Plus: why “sparkle” matters in a crowded market, how query letters must signal tone as much as plot, and the difference between intriguing and confusing.
Listen to the episode here or watch it on YouTube!
“It’s one of the most common mistakes authors make is ending the plot paragraph with a question about the stakes that is super internal. I feel very strongly that the stakes have to be external in a query letter because we are focused on plot for the query letter.”
-CeCe Lyra
Don’t Force It, Seduce It: Lessons on Prose from a Poet’s Bedside
By Maria Giesbrecht
The first time I invited my now-fiancé over to my apartment, I cleaned everything. The usual spots, of course, but also the little hidden ledge behind my yellow thrift-store curtains. I even washed behind the faucet. Right before he arrived, I tenderly dropped eucalyptus essential oil in my diffuser, said a few affirmations, and—crucially—I killed the “big lights.” If you know, you know. I was preparing for the arrival of magic. Thankfully, as a poet, I had practiced this hundreds of times. I was fluent in the language of seducing my poems.
I’ve been thinking about how we can treat our prose with the same romantic reverence. In a world of “productivity hacks” and “word counts,” writing can sometimes start to feel like a blue-collar job. We’re told to put our heads down, grind it out, and be consistent, like language is a resource hiding inside a rock. Like if we chip away every day, we’ll finally get to the gold inside.
Poets, on the other hand, cannot compose a poem without treating language as something to be courted, seduced, and revered. Poems insist upon it. We know that you cannot demand a masterpiece any more than you can demand a spark on a first date. Perhaps when we’re stuck and the words aren’t coming, we can take a page from the poets. What would the poets do? (Put that on a bracelet.)
The Foreplay
A runner doesn’t attempt a marathon without stretching. A musician doesn’t walk onstage without tuning their instrument. Yet, writers often sit down at a cluttered desk under buzzing fluorescent lights and wonder why the sentences feel like gravel. We hear the advice “just write every day.” So when that doesn’t happen in every circumstance we hope it will, we’re disappointed.
What if we chose to begin with our bodies already relaxed, open, and ready to receive? This is what I call the “foreplay” of the craft. There’s no exact science to this, so don’t overthink it. Everyone’s ritual will be different. For me, it’s the soft croon of a Bon Iver song or reading a few poems out loud to feel the vibration in my throat. It loosens the tongue. Sometimes I light a few candles and turn on the record player. My brain already knows these cues: Rest, relax, calm, wind down, create. I slip into my writing time with ease because I’ve built a template for it.
This is not a new thing, this “seduction” of the mind. Toni Morrison rose before dawn to drink coffee and watch the light arrive, using its brightness as a signal to start writing. Gertrude Stein famously required a cow to be in her field of vision to write poetry, literally driving through the French countryside until the “mood” of a specific bovine matched her internal rhythm. Pablo Neruda wrote only in green ink, the color of hope. Friedrich Schiller kept a drawer of rotting apples in his desk because the pungent, fermented smell jolted his brain into a creative state.
While this sounds like the whims of the eccentric, there is a neurological mercy to these rituals. They work because of something called the Pavlov Effect. Your brain begins to associate these sensory “cues” (the candle, the music, the rotting apples) with the “unconditioned stimulus” of writing. Eventually, the cues alone trigger a conditioned response, a subconscious “dive” into your work, signaling your nervous system to wind down and focus before you even type a word. By automating the “start” of your session through a ritual, you conserve mental energy for the actual creative task rather than wasting it on the friction of getting started.
The Invitation
Imagine your creative mind as a house. Most of the time, for the sake of survival, we keep the windows shut tight to keep out the noise of the world. We have word counts, deadlines, and laundry. It’s easier to focus on the goal if we ignore the rest of the world’s busy stimuli. But a closed house grows stale. To write well, you have to open the windows, especially when you’re feeling stuck. Instinctually, we might feel the desire to narrow our field of vision. But often what our creative practice needs in these moments is expansion, not constriction.
When I was writing my first poetry collection, A Little Feral, I often went to coffee shops, libraries, and other public places to write. Sometimes to eavesdrop, but mainly to absorb the sounds, smells, and atmosphere of a new place. I’d sit with my notebook, letting the stray fragments of other people’s lives drift in like a breeze. Once, I overheard a woman in a floral scarf tell her friend, “I love him, even his beaming bald spot.” That sentence made it into my poetry collection.
When we open the windows, we let the weird in. If I’m at home, I often use a ten-minute surreal meditation to do this. There are wonderful free ones on YouTube. It’s a way to create abstract associations that my logical, “blue-collar” mind would never approve. Subconsciously, I’m absorbing the strange, and I end up with unique work on the page.
Another practical way to open the windows of your creative practice is to borrow popular poetry exercises and use them for your prose. Here are a few:
The Erasure Method: Take a page from a boring newspaper or an old manual and black out words until a hidden sentence or string of lines emerges. See if you can incorporate that sentence into your work-in-progress. Perhaps it’s a killer first line for a scene.
Write to music: With lyrics. I know, I know. As you’re listening, try to “harvest” a word or two from the songs and incorporate it into your writing.
The Acrostic: Deborah Landau’s book Skeletons is entirely composed of acrostics. This is a form where the first letter of each line spells a word. Apply it to your prose as a warm-up. All you have to do to start is pick a word.
The Afterglow
Ultimately, prose, just like poetry, can be wooed until it becomes warm and malleable under our fingertips. This starts with replacing a demand with a welcome. Just as I did that night before my fiancé walked through the door, I’ve learned that the work doesn’t start when my fingers hit the keys. It starts in the atmosphere. It requires a kind of foreplay. A wooing of sorts. If we treat our writing as a logistical obstacle, it’ll give us the bare minimum. But if we court it? If we wash behind the literal and metaphorical faucets, drop the eucalyptus oil, and signal to ourselves that we’re ready for a visitation? That is when the sentences start to shimmer.
Tuesday Teaser 😉
Paid members will find Carly and CeCe’s written critiques of the two standout 📕Books with Hooks🪝 queries discussed on this week’s podcast in next Tuesday’s newsletter, along with…
Eloisa James, author of The Last Lady B, breaks down how to reimagine iconic stories by borrowing characters, themes, and emotional beats—and then making them your own!
In our popular Meet Your Dream Agent segment, we profile Gina Panettierri who is the Founder and President of Talcott Notch Literary Services, LLC! Gina gives us so much to chew on, but we especially love what she has to say about the most common mistakes writers make:
“I think not giving enough detailed information is a big mistake. If the query feels too vague or general, the reader may feel the story feels too familiar, and that’s deadly. More detail can help distinguish your story from the pack.”
Gina also generously shares a near-perfect query letter! We hope you’re all collecting these like rare Pokémon cards because they’re worth their weight in gold.
You’ll also want to hear where Gina signs up most of her clients. 👀 It’s not where you might expect!
Then, A.N. Caudle, author of Worthy of Fate, provides some excellent answers in her Q&A, including this gem:
“I heard a quote some time ago, and it’s changed my perspective on what time I have: “Instead of saying ‘I don’t have time for...’, say ‘I’m prioritizing doing __ over __.” This really helped me to see where my true passions lie. I’m prioritizing writing and progressing my career over relaxing, reading, doomscrolling, etc.”
Podcast favourite, Ronit Plank of Let’s Talk Memoir returns with an excellent essay titled Yes, when writing memoir you own your experience. But what to do about other people?
This part really resonated:
“Once we have a better understanding about the story we are trying to tell—that is, the meaning we are making from our circumstances—we must add nuance and complexity by rendering those with whom we are in relationship with in fully fleshed out ways. I admit in the early months of working on my pages, I found myself occasionally veering into the self-righteous and ruthless. Like some mustachioed cartoon villain brandishing my cartoon sword, I swiped at anyone who had dared hurt me. Take that, Mom! Take that Dad! And you too, Dad’s unfriendly ex-girlfriend!
But there is a difference between writing about how a loved one made you feel bad and doing so with context and speculation.”
Not yet a member? For just $10 USD a month or $120 USD a year you get:
an exclusive newsletter on Tuesdays featuring bonus author Q&As and other exclusive content from industry experts
access to Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra’s written notes on queries from the podcast’s Books With Hooks feature
monthly bonus podcast episodes, AND
regular Ask Me Anythings / Q&As with Carly, CeCe, and Bianca Marais.
If that doesn’t kickstart your writing journey, we don’t know what will!
Last Beta Reader Match Up of the Summer!
Are you looking for beta readers, some of whom might potentially become writing group members down the line? Are you wanting to be matched up with those writing in a similar genre and/or time zone, so they can critique your work as you critique theirs at the same time? Your manuscript doesn’t have to be complete to sign up!
On the 2nd of June, Bianca will match you up with between 2-6 other writers in similar genres and/or time zones depending on how many writers sign up. After that, it’s up to you to set up a date when you’ll either all meet up virtually to discuss your work or just send each other your written critiques. Whatever works best for you!
Important Instructions:
Submit 3000 words in a Word document before midnight ET on 1 June. If they aren’t opening chapters, you need to provide a summary so your beta readers have context for the submission. You may ask 2-5 specific questions within the same document for your beta readers to address. The summary and questions don’t form part of the 3000 words.
Cost: US $25
That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰
Tune in again next week for more invaluable wisdom from our wonderful hosts! Until then, happy writing! 😍
❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
Our work takes place on land now known as Toronto and Ottawa and we acknowledge that these are the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat Peoples as well as the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. Toronto is covered under Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties. We respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures, languages, and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada. We invite you to learn more about the land you inhabit, the history of that land, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together at Native Land or Whose Land.
Cece Lyra is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you’d like to query CeCe, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wsherman.com. Carly Watters is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
Maria is a star 👏🏼
The idea of replacing demand with welcome really landed for me. It changes the relationship to the page from extraction to invitation, which feels like a much truer way to get prose to reveal itself.