✨Query Critiques Inside; Rosie Danan Shares Her 3-Step Process for Creating Story Ideas that Sell...and more!✨

Bestselling author Colleen Oakley on getting out of your own way; Rainie Oet's strategy for summoning inspiration; CeCe's latest course; and you're invited to the literary event of the summer!

Greetings, writing friends!

It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means…Last week was 📕Books with Hooks 🪝week on the podcast, so today we’ve got Carly and CeCe’s written query critiques for you below (and now that it’s March, our query critique archive has been updated to include all of February’s written feedback so you can easily find it all in one place). And, of course, that’s not all…

On a scale of one to 10, Colleen Oakley’s inner self critic goes to 11. You’d think if you were a USA Today bestselling author (Editor’s note: odds are good you’ve seen, if not read, her The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise), that little voice in your head would be a little less mean, but no. In today’s author video, Colleen (whose latest, Jane and Dan at the end of the World, is out today!) shares just how rotten her inner critic is as well as her tips for getting it to be quiet so she can prove it wrong when it tells her things like: “You have no idea what you’re doing” and “These words are terrible.” If your inner critic is getting in the way of your writing (and odds are also good that it has at one time or another), Colleen’s tips can help you get it to shut up. 🙊🤐

Six in six to five. What’s that, you ask? Why, only the number of books award-winning and bestselling author Rosie Danan (whose latest, Fan Service, is out now!) has sold in as many years to Big Five publishers. If that sounds like something you wouldn’t mind being able to say about yourself, you’ll definitely want to read today’s essay, which is all about how to sift through that list of random inspiration and ideas all authors keep and pick the right one—the right one being the idea that has what it takes to be both creatively inspiring over the long-term and commercially marketable. It’s a simple, three-step framework that will make your writing process more efficient and less painful. Check it out below!

We’ve also got a deeply thoughtful Q&A from poet and novelist Rainie Oet, whose middle grade novel-in-verse (Glitch Girl!) is out today. Rainie’s responses serve up practical craft advice alongside encouraging insights for working through writers’ block (and making it work for, rather than against, you), the iterative nature of the writing journey (“No book you can ever write is *the* book of your career—you will always be writing the next”) and the importance of being real in your life and in your writing. Keep reading for more of Rainie’s wisdom!

In case you missed Friday’s big announcement, we’re resharing it today: Tickets are now on sale for Bianca’s launch party for A Most Puzzling Murder and it is going to be THE literary event of the summer. Authors, agents (including Carly and CeCe!), editors, entertainers, book signings…this really is one you won’t want to miss. For more details and to buy your ticket now, check out the announcement below! 🎟️🎫That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team