✨Sara Read on the art of rewriting✨

Our hosts are joined on-air with an emerging author and debate genre in BWH. Sara Read encourages revision. We also share links to Bianca and Carly's courses, and the Beta Reader Match Up

Happy Friday, all you wonderful listeners ! We hope those words are flowing and you’re finding inspiration wherever you can (including here 😍).

In this week’s episode, Paige joins Bianca, Carly, and CeCe to discuss her query letter and opening pages, as the hosts hotly debate whether Paige is pitching in the right genre. Bianca then interviews Sara Read to discuss her work Principles of (E)motion, and its journey to publication. We’ve shared a link to Carly’s Publishing Playbook course, and Bianca’s memoir webinar, which is happening tomorrow (where does the time go😅)! We also have a giveaway from one of the memoirists participating in Bianca’s webinar. Lastly, The Beta Reader Match-up is back 😍

As usual, we are continuing our TSNOTYAW Membership Program so you can get even more The Shit No One Tells You About Writing goodness! Our podcast episodes and Friday newsletter issues will continue to go out free of charge (we *love* sharing all this amazing content with writers like you). But as TSNOTYAW has grown, so too have the many, many hours our team pours into it, and in order to be able to keep showing up for our lovely listeners, we ask that you consider joining our paid community.

For just $8USD a month or $80USD a year, you can receive our paid newsletter on Tuesdays which features weekly bonus author Q&As, exclusive content from industry experts, weekly 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!

Thanks for reading ❤️

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team

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This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨

In this week’s 📕Books with Hooks🪝, Bianca, Carly, and CeCe are joined by Paige to discuss her query for her action-adventure romance novel. They discuss:

• The importance of spelling out your protagonist's motivation in your query

• The need for story-forward plot escalation

• Accurately positioning your novel’s genre

• Making an agent's job easier by picking the right comps

• Using external plot to make readers invested in your characters

• Following genre rules when it comes to plot points

• The need for conflict and tension in Act Two

• Focusing on your protagonist in your opening lines/paragraphs

• Avoiding character descriptions that are too on the nose

• The need for active emotions in addition to interiority

• The intrigue of complex emotions, and

• What makes a work YA rather than adult fiction

After which, Bianca interviews author, nurse, and co-founder of #momswritersclub, Sara Read. They discuss:

• Sara's sophomore novel, Principles of (E)motion

• Her path to publication

• Querying her first novel and the feedback she received

• Structure mistakes that beginner writers tend to make

• How Sara pitched her second novel

• The importance of rewriting before you give up on a WIP

• What Sara learned from each of her rewrites

• The need for causality in story

• Her research process

• The prologue in Principles of (E)motion, and

More information about Sara can be found here. She's also on Instagram and Twitter.

You can purchase Principles of (E)motion on our Bookshop.org affiliate page here. Buying books through this link supports a local indie bookstore, as well as The Shit No One Tells You About Writing 📚❤️

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Writing memoir? 😍🌟

Join Bianca TOMORROW from 10am-5pm ET as she hosts a one-day virtual retreat specifically for memoirists!

Speakers include:

• Catherine Gildiner – Author of Too Close to the Falls, After the Falls, Coming Ashore and Good Morning, Monster: Five Heroic Journeys to Recovery. 

• Chelsea Devantez - Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, and filmmaker.  Author of the upcoming memoir, I Shouldn't Be Telling You This (But I'm Going to Anyway). 

• Courtney Maum - Author of five books, including the game changing publishing guide, Before and After the Book Deal, and the memoir, The Year of the Horses.

• Bonny Reichert – Award-winning journalist, chef, and author of the upcoming memoir, How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty.

• Abby Maslin – Bestselling author of the memoir, Love You Hard, and a contributing essayist in Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids. 

• Ronit Plank - Award-winning writer, teacher, and podcaster who hosts Let's Talk Memoir. Author of the memoir, When She Comes Back.  

Each 40-minute session will be followed by a 20-minute Q & A in which delegates get to ask the presenters all their burning questions.

​The retreat will be taped, and the recording will be sent out the next day.

The registration fee is US $ 149.00

Register right now! Last chance!

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Giveaway 😍🌟

Win a signed copy of I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This by Chelsea Devantez, one of the incredible speakers in the All About Webinar lineup tomorrow. 

A dynamic memoir-in-essays by comedian, screenwriter, and podcaster Chelsea Devantez, detailing her tumultuous upbringing and uproarious career path into Hollywood.

There are things Chelsea Devantez probably shouldn’t be telling you. Many of them are in this book: some are embarrassing (like her three year spell of celibacy that she tried to break with a guide of seduction tips). Some are confessional (getting sentenced to the “hell hill” at Mormon church camp). Some are TMI (a series of outrageous doctor visits that ended with one doctor misdiagnosing her as “pregnant.” Woopsies!)

Then there are things Chelsea really shouldn’t be telling you: like the time her biggest family secret got publicly outed, or about the drive-by shootings and the precipitating domestic violence she survived. Yet through the ups and downs, it’s the women in Chelsea’s life who kept her going – from the lowest points of her childhood when she and her mom had only $100 left to their name, all the way to her career highs as the Emmy-nominated Head Writer for The Problem with Jon Stewart and sensational podcaster deemed “the memoir whisperer” by her fans.
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In I Shouldn't Be Telling You This, Chelsea centers each story around a different woman who shaped her life, taking us on a tour of friends and strangers, fictional characters and celebrities, heroes and villains who will destroy any Netflix algorithm for a “strong female lead.” Reading this book will feel kinda like that moment at a party when your friend beckons you close, sloshes her martini around, and covertly whispers, “I really shouldn’t say this, but…”

To enter, click below!

Registration closes on the 31st of May.
Winners will be notified directly.

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Be part of Carly’s masterclass 😍📝

Carly’s class includes 10+ hours of writing and publishing video lessons you have lifetime access to, monthly Q&A sessions, and fresh content every quarter.

The next live Q&A session for the course is May 23rd! So sign up before then to access the content and get in on the live Q&A action.

Did we mention there’s an app, too? You can keep learning on the go. Don’t miss a minute of Carly’s top career advice for aspiring, emerging and published writers. Get the writing career you’ve always dreamed of.

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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 for this 3,000-word review!

​Registrations are open from now until the 2nd of June with the match emails going out on the 3^rd of June!

For more information and to register, click below!

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Send us your Q&A and comp requests 🥰🌟

Call and leave us a 60 second message (an exercise in being concise 😅) either asking a publishing/writing-related question, or requesting a comp for your novel! Carly and CeCe will answer your questions, and the lovely Emilie Sommer will give you comps that’ll bring your query letter to the next level— she’s the comp master 😍 Give us as much detail as you can, so that we can do our best to assist you on your writing journey ❤️ Further details and the link to leave a message are here. We’ll be recording our responses mid-May so make that call ASAP!

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That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰

Until next week, happy writing! Tune in again then for more invaluable wisdom from our wonderful hosts! 😍

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team

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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.

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Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra are literary agents at P.S. Literary Agency, but their work in this newsletter is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly and CeCe in this newsletter are solely that of themselves and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.

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