Happy Halloween, all you spooky 💩 heads!
We’re guessing there aren’t any costumes that could possibly be scarier than this year’s newspaper headlines. In fact, the only thing more horrifying than reading the news is staring down the blank page! But you might surprise us with your ingenuity! Tag us on socials so we can see what terrifying outfits you come up with. Bonus points if they’re literary themed! Plus, a special shout out to all the horror and supernatural writers out there - may your freak flags fly extra high today as you let your zombie muses out from your trapdoor basements for some fresh air. 😱🪦👻
This week’s podcast episode was a📕Books with Hooks🪝segment which, since Bianca wasn’t there, predictably went off the rails. This is no coincidence as Carly and CeCe can’t seem to behave when Bianca isn’t around.😂 A good thing, too, since coincidences give Carly the icks! Listen to the episode to find out why!
This month is our last monthly video Q&A segment with Carly and CeCe which is being phased out since they started recording the Shooting the Shit segment. If you have any STS topic suggestions, you can comment on each week’s latest STS Instagram post, and the hosts will consider them there.
Don’t forget to diarize the 21st of November for the early bird registrations for our very last Deep Dive Virtual Retreat happening the weekend of the 31st of January and 1st of February. More details will start dropping next week! This lineup is spectacular and we can’t wait to start sharing it with you. If you’d like to get a reminder email to register on the 21st at 12pm ET, you can register for that here.
Also, we’re revamping our newsletter author Q&A and you can win a coveted Books with Hooks appearance by commenting below with suggested questions that you’d love to hear authors answering. You have until midnight ET to comment. We’ll announce the winner tomorrow!
And finally, author Chelsea Bieker is back again along with Kimberly King Parsons to share The Fountain’s 100-Day Winter Intensive with you!
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✨🎙️✨
This week on the podcast (listen to it here or watch it on YouTube!), Carly and CeCe hold down the fort while Bianca is away—and things get delightfully silly. The duo dig into two very different query letters.
First up, a reality-TV-inspired contemporary romance about a bisexual woman who falls for siblings on a dating show. Carly and CeCe discuss the strength of the hook, the pitfalls of coincidences, and why adding depth and critique of celebrity culture can make these stories stand out. Then they critique a cli-fi mystery set in the high-stakes world of Alaskan firefighting. The hosts explore why climate fiction can be a tough sell, how to strengthen a query’s climax, and why specificity in language matters.
“One thing that I worry about with this one is the coincidences. It’s another one of my long-standing threads that I love to talk about on this show is I get the ‘ick’ around coincidences.”
-Carly Watters
This Month’s Q&A Video with Carly and CeCe!
This will be our last monthly Q&A video segment as Carly and CeCe have transitioned to their weekly Shooting the Shit segment. In this Q&A session, Carly and CeCe tackle a variety of questions, ranging from the nuances of writing memoirs versus fiction, to the intricacies of querying agents and the publishing process. They emphasize the importance of critical thinking and personal vision, and also touch on the challenges and opportunities within the historical fiction genre.
The Importance of Finding a Season for Devotion
By Chelsea Bieker
When I was a young writer, I didn’t think much about process. I wrote in bursts, feverishly and intuitively, chasing whatever emotion was hot at the surface. There was no plan, no scaffolding, no system. Only the beauty of surprise at what might come out. If I made myself cry, laugh, or feel thrilled in the process, I knew I’d done good work.
The first time I encountered a deadline was in a community college fiction workshop. Suddenly, my fiction writing had a due date. My classmates would be reading and talking about it on Wednesday. My wild creative bursts would have to become concrete. They were now homework. Strangely, this prospect felt soothing. It made my dream tangible. It meant the work was real enough to be required by something outside myself. It meant I had to sit down and finish a story to the end.
In time, my life became not just about how to write, but how to keep writing. How to build a practice that could withstand the shifting tides of career, family, grief, financial pressure, and the never-ending questions of time itself. How to protect the love that first brought me to the page?
After twenty-one odd years of writing, I’ve learned that sustainability doesn’t come from sheer willpower or endless productivity. It comes from creating containers—intentional, time-bound spaces where your devotion to the work has somewhere to live, accelerate, and thrive.
A container is not a cage but rather a frame that allows the art to flow. I think this is especially important when considering a book-length project, a process that can often take years and perhaps a lifetime if we don’t set temporal boundaries. It’s daunting to stand at the threshold of a book idea and fathom devoting that much time to one thing when outcomes are unknown. Thrilling, but daunting nonetheless.
This is why I’ve come to love working within seasons. There’s something sacred about knowing a certain intensity will exist only for a time. When you step into a defined container like a 100-day immersive, you’re not signing up for forever. You’re stepping into a temporary temple of attention. You’re saying: For this window of time, I will give myself to this work and intentionally simplify all the rest.
I find there is a relief that comes with boundary. There’s aliveness in knowing it won’t always feel so intense, that the devotion has a future point where I’ll be able to catch my breath. I also think having a set container allows us to build in a steady and focused way that is necessary to hold the complexities a novel or memoir asks of us. It’s much easier to hold the entire universe of your book in your mind when you are in a tight container. There’s a natural causality and connectivity that makes its way into your scenes that will serve the project immensely as you revise and later, want others to read.
Creative sustainability requires both discipline and devotion—but we often confuse one for the other. Discipline gets us to the desk while devotion keeps us there with heart. Discipline says, I must. Devotion says, I get to. When we write from devotion, the body softens and possibility expands. The breath deepens. There’s curiosity instead of panic and focus instead of pressure. We enter true flow, which is the high I am always chasing and I’d guess you are too.
At The Fountain, this integration—discipline held within devotion—is at the center of everything we do. We believe there are times to push, times to pause, and times to immerse yourself so deeply with others that you live and breathe the project. This allows you to experience your project in a way that is just simply not as possible with a scattered schedule and without the structural support of other writers showing up the same way. The container allows for the magic.
That’s what The Fountain’s 100-Day Winter Intensive is designed to hold: a devoted, time-bound container where your creative focus can thrive. It’s long enough to be incredibly powerful but not so long that you lose stamina. One season where you can set other things to the side as much as possible and give yourself the gift of time. One hundred days of structure, curriculum, community, accountability, and devotion to your project and to yourself as an artist. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer our writing is not infinite time, but a season of total presence. Done alongside other writers who share in your goals and dreams, it’s a powerful thing.
We are so thrilled to offer our intensive again this winter. If you’re interested in writing your book with us this January to April learn more at www.fountainpractice.com or email connect@fountainpractice.com
Chelsea Bieker and Kimberly King Parsons are devoted to teaching writers how to write with self-trust and build sustainable, lifelong creative practices. Their shared commitment to the whole writer led them to co-create The Fountain, an online writing platform offering live intensives, self-paced courses, a monthly membership community, original Clearings™ audio visualizations, and a podcast — all designed to help writers navigate career and cultivate clarity, creative stamina, and artistic devotion.
Tuesday Teaser 😉
Paid members will find Carly and CeCe’s written critiques of the 📕Books with Hooks🪝 queries discussed on this week’s podcast in next Tuesday’s newsletter, along with an author Q&A from Brian Schaefer, author of Town & Country, in which he breaks down the three things he’s done to build a writing network. We also love how he encourages us to rethink the definition of what a “successful author” is.
Then we have an awesome essay from Brisa Carleton, author of Last Call at the Savoy, about Why You Should Write Your Next Book Before the First One Sells.
In her author video, Heather Gudenkauf, author of The Perfect Hosts, provides practical tips on using setting to create mood, steer action, and reveal secrets, making it an integral part of the narrative rather than just a backdrop to it!
We then have another brilliant author essay penned by Kendra Broekhuis, author of Nearly Beloved, about why Your Ideas Aren’t as Precious as Your Agility. In it, she quotes organizational psychologist Adam Grant who put it this way:
“In the past, people were hired and promoted based on ability. In the future, the more valuable currency will be agility. We should bet on people with the motivation to learn and the flexibility to change.”
Not yet a member? For just $8USD a month or $80USD 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!
The Last Beta Reader Match Up of the Year 💞
Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Beta Reader Match Up? Or you have signed up before but haven’t yet found your writing soul mates? The next match up is the last one of the year so don’t snooze on it!
Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and/or time zone, so they can critique your work as you critique theirs.
Your manuscript doesn’t have to be complete to sign up for this 3000-word evaluation.
This particular match up will be open to registrations from now until the 2nd of November, with the match up emails going out on the 3rd of November.
Please spread the word even if you aren’t signing up this time! The more writers we have registered, the better the matches will be, which means you’ll be paying it forward to your fellow authors.
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.
What do edits from your agent look like? Queries keyed to the manuscript, like a dev edit? Or is it more of a manuscript assessment, with a report or letter listing general queries using examples from the manuscript? How do you handle these revisions? Do you hire an editor or tackle them on your own?
I would love to hear what authors do to build their author business. Do they take time to build a business plan? Does this come into play as they query? With the volatility of the publishing industry, are they strategizing for change? Or is this something they work on once they find representation with an agent?