June Cohen is a media and technology pioneer whose career has repeatedly helped define new forms of storytelling. As a college student, she led the development of Proteus, the world’s first multimedia magazine, and later joined the team that launched HotWired, Wired magazine’s pioneering website. She went on to co-create TED Talks, then co-founded the media company WaitWhat, where she created the hit podcasts Masters of Scale and Meditative Story.

Her new book, The Great Remembering, begins with a change of heart. Cohen stopped believing technology alone could solve our biggest problems and started asking a different question: What can the ancients teach us about how to live today? Her answer takes her deep into practices humans have relied on for centuries—from sauna and pilgrimage to communal singing and ritual—and into the emerging science explaining why so many of them still work.

21 Questions with June Cohen

1. “I couldn’t have written my latest book without…”

A technique my husband Deron helped me invent. We call it “Cabin-in-the-Woods Thursday” (“Cabin Thursday” for short). Every Thursday, I would do the equivalent of going to an archetypal ‘cabin in the woods.’ To be clear: I worked on this book every day of the week. But on Thursday, I’d stay entirely focused (whether at home or by checking myself into a hotel) and write late into the night (often all night, like I did in college). I would keep at it until I worked through every wrinkle and turned a draft to my editor, Sara Grace (each draft was a single chapter; I’d typically take 4-5 drafts to finalize each chapter). I need this intensive deadline-driven cycle to help my open-ended brain close down its options, make final decisions, and declare something “finished.”

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

I think most people vastly underestimate the resilience and courage required to write a book.

3. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

First: I notice the wave of physical relief move through my body. (I’ve been training myself to notice things like this.) Then: I go to sleep. This is usually somewhere between 3 AM and 7 AM.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Absolutely. And I also had more “beta” readers than my publisher had ever dreamed of. It freaked everyone out, but I had around 30 early readers, and I asked all of them, “Where does it grab you?” “Where does it lose you?” I don’t try to please everyone, but I do try to learn from everyone. Just like entrepreneurs can learn from every “no,” writers can learn from every critique. Sometimes, there’s a gap you can’t close; but very often there’s a kernel of truth telling you how to engage a wider audience without compromising your voice or vision.

5. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

It’s less the advice and more the modeling of how humans with excellence and integrity carry themselves in the world and care for the humans they work with. In my 20s, I had the incredible good fortune of working for Wired, in San Francisco — specifically for HotWired, the digital side. There were geniuses everywhere in that office — so many extraordinary people I learned from. But I especially learned from two incredible, very different women: our creative director Barbara Kuhr and our president Beth Vanderslice.

They were both unrelenting in their pursuit of excellence and integrity. But that’s only part of what I learned from them. They both remain close friends to this day, and this mutual commitment to friendship and care is the most important thing I learned from both of them. My husband and I visit Barb and her husband almost every year; we all root each other on. Beth and I live in the same city; she’s been to every wedding and every funeral in my family. That’s the kind of mutual bond between teammates I aspire to, always. Neither Beth nor Barb ever gave me this advice in words. But if they had, it might have been: “Never forget to care about the people you work with. Never be afraid to love them.”

6. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

There are two ways I find new ideas: One is actively seeking them out … movies, books, exhibits, concerts, museums, events, immersive experiences. The other: Making my way to beautiful remote places in nature where ideas can find me.

Keeping track of them? I write things in small notebooks and type them into my iPhone notes. Honestly, I don’t do the best job of cataloging them, but I seem to rediscover them right when I need them.

7. What’s something about you that people wouldn’t guess from your bio?

When I was a tiny kid, I had a deathly fear of Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. Today, I collect small carved statues of elephants everywhere I travel. Are those connected? I don’t know! I never thought to connect them until now.

8. How did you find your agent?

I don’t have one.

9. What have you stopped doing that made you a better writer, or made the writing life better?

For this book in particular, I stopped consuming anything that smelled of the outrage news cycle.

10. What tech tools—including AI—do you use, and which ones do you actively ignore?

I use AI extensively—for tech help, formatting transcripts, and minor translation. I also use it for research (though with great caution, as I’ve been badly burned). But the real answer is: After a career of being a relentless early adopter, I’ve become very choiceful. I actively ignore a lot.

11. What’s one thing you pay for that has been worth every penny to your writing career?

• My college education

• Every Broadway musical I ever attended

• My subscription to Britannica

• Hot yoga and sauna sessions

12. How many drafts do you typically go through before showing the manuscript to your editor?

For this book, I wrote chapter by chapter, submitting a new draft to my editor, Sara Grace (who is a freaking brilliant collaborator), every week. I need the weekly deadline and feedback to write at my best.

13. Describe your ideal workday. How does it compare with your actual one?

Ideal typical day: Writing and deep creative work all morning; collaborative work with other humans from 12-3; exercise and nature from 3-6. Socializing and dinner after that. My actual day usually has too few people, too little exercise, and too little nature. But I’m working on that.

14. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Well, I can’t resist saying: Many of the things we call procrastination are actually wisdom systems that help us think better and thrive. For centuries now, we humans have modeled ourselves after machines. Striving to be productive, efficient, logical. But humans are not machines. Our human operating system is fleshy and illogical and emotional … and we’ve kind of forgotten how to operate it. We’ve forgotten how much we need movement and music and nature. We’ve forgotten how much we need each other.

So when I pause my writing to go for a run, or sing along to a song, or call a friend, or even clean a messy corner of the room, I don’t admonish myself for it. I tell my human self, “Good job for remembering you’re not a machine, and giving your human body what it needs to keep thinking and writing.”

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Listening. Really listening.

16. What’s the strangest or most unexpected response you’ve received from a reader?

With The Great Remembering, specifically, people very often comment on things they loved in the book that actually aren’t in the book at all. They might say, “Now I remember why I loved boxing” or “Now I remember how important my parent’s coffee ritual was.” I didn’t really write about any of those things. But the book inspires these personal “Aha!” moments. It’s endlessly interesting and surprising to me what people remember when they look at the world through these twin lenses: on one hand, “people have always done this,” and on the other, “here’s why science says it works.”

17. What’s something you’ve changed your mind about recently?

Lots of things. I’ve spent the last three years working on this book and thinking about ‘wisdom systems’ — practices that both accomplish something practical and also holistically (often covertly) support human thriving. One of my unofficial definitions of a ‘wisdom system’ is that it makes someone roll their eyes. Whether you roll your eyes at yoga or golf; potluck dinners or tailgate parties … one person’s eye roll is another person’s wisdom system. Seeing the world through this lens made me rethink a lot. Usually with a smile.

18. What are you unwilling to do to sell more books?

I’m unwilling to release a book that falls short of what I believe to be excellence. In other words: I’m unwilling to shortchange the writing process. Pretty much everyone in my life felt I spent too much time researching, writing, rewriting, adding to, and footnoting this book — when I needed to start marketing it. And don’t get me wrong; I wanted to stop writing and start marketing. But the book wasn’t done yet. Not in my eyes. And I just wasn’t willing to compromise on that. At the end of the day, I’d rather be the person who creates an excellent book, sturdy in its truth, and which perhaps a smaller number of people find and love than one who writes a book that falls short of excellence or integrity but sells like crazy.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre, what would it be?

I actually don’t have that aspiration! I wrote or co-wrote two earlier books—and I didn’t love either of them because I didn’t love their genres. The Great Remembering is exactly the kind of book I love to read. So it’s the only kind of book I want to write.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How hard it is. Everyone knows it’s hard. Everyone says it’s hard. Over my career, I conducted dozens of interviews with people saying it’s hard and commissioned dozens of TED talks and podcast episodes with people saying writing is hard (including Elizabeth Gilbert’s iconic TED talk on creativity and podcast episodes from Susan Orlean and Isabel Allende on writing their master works and how hard it was). But I still didn’t really understand how hard it is. I didn’t know that it can feel like you’re “opening a vein.” I didn’t understand that it can feel like you’re being eaten alive. I’ve led many challenging creative projects in my career; I’ve walked many times through the “creative fog.” But nothing brought me to my knees like writing this book.

21. What is your new book about?

I’ll answer this the way I talk about it in person… My work on The Great Remembering started when I stopped believing that technology could solve the world’s challenges and started asking a different question: What can the ancients teach us about how to live today?

My starting point was this: Today’s existential crises—the mental health crisis, the climate crisis, the crisis of community conflict (that feeling of intractable divisions and anger everywhere), and the coming crisis of AI challenging our way of life—actually aren’t new. They’re real; they require our urgent attention. But they’re not new.

For all of human history, we’ve struggled with the same things: Mental anguish. Tribal conflict. Depletion of natural resources. Even the creation of technologies so powerful they could destroy us. And if these are the challenges we humans reliably create for ourselves, our ancestors must have had solutions for them. The ideas had to be out there. So I set out to discover them.

What I found was hiding in plain sight: there are indeed practices (I call them “wisdom systems”) that humans relied on for thousands of years to manage fear, grief, conflict, and change. Wisdom systems like the sauna, the festival, the epic physical challenge; wisdom systems like pilgrimage, group singing, communal awe, and communal grief. These weren’t just traditions; they were solutions. And modern science — often very thrilling new science — is confirming what humans have always known.

You can learn more about June’s book here: The Great Remembering: Powerful Ancient Practices—and the New Science Bringing Them Back.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Subscribe now

A quick heads-up that our next session of Office Hours will be Tuesday, October 27, at 4 p.m. ET.

If you haven’t attended yet, these monthly sessions are casual, half-hour get-togethers where we can check in on what we’re working on, trade ideas, ask questions, and generally help each other navigate the labyrinthine world of writing and publishing. No slides, no formal agenda, and no recording. You’re welcome to be as candid as you’d like.

Office Hours are a perk of paid and founding membership and (imho), one of the best things about Author Insider. It’s a thoughtful, supportive, and determined group of writers at all stages of publishing. I would love to see you there.

Here are a few topics that might come up:

• Writing and book proposals: Developing ideas, finding your angle, working through a manuscript, or approaching agents.

• Publishing decisions: Traditional vs. hybrid vs. self-publishing, finding the right path for your book, and understanding how the industry works.

• Building your audience: Newsletters, Substack, social media, and connecting with potential readers.

• Marketing and publicity: Getting attention for your book, planning a launch, or keeping the momentum going afterward.

• Whatever’s on your mind: Challenges, small victories, questions, or something you’d just like to bounce off the group.

You don’t need to have a specific question or problem to join. Sometimes it’s nice to connect with other writers going through the same process.

→ RSVP here for Office Hours

I hope to see you there!

-Panio Gianopoulos

Kelly McGonigal is a psychologist, Stanford lecturer, and bestselling author whose books have explored willpower, stress, movement, and the ways psychological science can help us live better. She also has a demanding standard for when an idea is ready for a book—researching it, teaching it, living with it, and carrying it around in her head until she feels she has something worth saying.

Her new book, Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking, turns that attention to an emotion we often underestimate or even distrust. McGonigal argues that joy is not a luxury or an escape from difficulty, but a source of meaning, connection, and resilience, and that learning to let ourselves experience it can be an act of courage in its own right.

21 Questions with Kelly McGonigal

1. I couldn’t have written my latest book without…

Google Scholar. Any sentence in the book might have twenty or more studies behind it. Also, the hundreds of students from all over the world who took my online course The Science and Practice of Joy during the years I was writing the book. They helped shape it with their feedback, questions, and stories.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

People in my life are always surprised at how long it takes me to write a book (years). Writing words isn’t the rate-limiting factor. It’s the research, the interviews, the thinking, testing ideas through teaching, and living the topic long enough to have something worthwhile to say.

3. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I tell people I submitted the manuscript in the hopes that someone will celebrate with me and acknowledge that it’s a big deal! When I submitted the revisions to my last book, my dance students—who had seen me discouraged about the book after missing multiple deadlines to deal with family crises—brought disco ball helium balloons to class. I deeply appreciated the gesture.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I avoid reviews on Amazon, Audible, and Goodreads. The most useful feedback I get is when people tell me how a book helped them. I also learn during book promotion what ideas people are most excited about, and what unanswered questions they have. I’m still giving interviews and talks about books that have been out for over a decade. What I say about those topics now is better because having the book out in the world taught me what people really want to know and need to hear.

5. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Over the past two decades, I’ve gotten the same feedback from editors, students, and readers. I am not as self-disclosing as they want, and they don’t feel like they really know me. It took me a long time to stretch into talking about myself and being more vulnerable in public. My latest book does this in a way I would have been uncomfortable with before. But it’s the first thing most people who have read the book comment on and thank me for.

6. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I’m most likely to get inspired by two types of information. 1) New scientific studies where there’s something quirky or ingenious about the methods that gets stuck in my mind. 2) Stories that I find moving. I’ve learned to trust the twist in my heart and gut I get from both of these sources. There’s a feeling to them and to their specificity that gets me thinking about the bigger theme or idea they reflect. I collect studies and stories like this, and my favorites often inspire chapter arcs and themes.

7. What’s something about you that people wouldn’t guess from your bio?

One trait I appreciate about myself is that I have managed to love whatever music has been popular (Billboard 100) consistently since the 1980s. Research shows that most people stop appreciating new pop music in their early twenties, but I’m riding this source of joy all the way to the end!

8. How did you find your agent?

I introduced myself to him at a conference held by the Northern California Science Writers Association at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. I told him I taught a popular course at Stanford on the science of willpower that had gotten a lot of media attention. He asked what the next three books I wanted to write were. I signed with him because he was thinking about me as a potential career author, not just a one-hit deal to broker.

9. What have you stopped doing that made you a better writer, or made the writing life better?

To finish my last book, I stopped paying attention to grievance- and outrage-driven social media, podcasts, and news platforms. That energy is the antithesis to the head space I need to be in to write with absolute sincerity, with the goal of helping people and highlighting the good in humanity.

10. What tech tools—including AI—do you use, and which ones do you actively ignore?

I still organize my thoughts with index cards, Post-it notes, and giant notepads. I use Zoom for interviews and refer to the video, audio, and transcripts for processing the conversation and fact-checking. AI has been useful for book promotion. For example, I’ll ask ChatGPT to review transcripts of a podcast I’m scheduled to go on and predict the kind of conversation the host will want to have.

11. What’s one thing you pay for that has been worth every penny to your writing career?

I hired a freelance editor, Connie Hale, to look at the early drafts of chapters when I wrote my first ‘big think’ psychology book in 2010. She helped me understand how to structure a chapter. She also line-edited some chapters for voice, which taught me how to do this myself. I also book my own travel for speaking and book promotion. I am willing to pay to make traveling less exhausting.

12. How many drafts do you typically go through before showing the manuscript to your editor?

By the time my manuscript is due to my editor, I’ve probably written and revised three times more material than I submit. That includes at least 100,000 words that have gone through multiple drafts and that nobody ever reads. As I get close to the deadline, I focus on the structure of the book and the organizing themes of each chapter (this comes last for me). Then I put in the material that belongs in that structure into each chapter, while still drafting new material. This is not efficient, but nothing else works for me.

13. Describe your ideal workday. How does it compare with your actual one?

If we’re really talking ideal, I would love to have a job that requires me to show up to the same place every day to produce something creative in collaboration with people I get to know over time. Working on a Broadway show or a radio program, for example. I’m still holding out hope I find myself in a situation like this someday. Almost nothing in my professional life works like this. Instead, I spend a lot of time thinking, creating, and preparing for classes or events by myself, and then delivering in a solo capacity. Most of my workday I am either alone, or I am the focus of other people’s attention, rather than one of many people contributing to a collective experience. Teaching dance classes at my local community center is my favorite professional activity because it comes closest to the feeling of showing up and co-creating something positive.

14. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Working on choreography for my dance classes. This is an improvement over my previous preferred form of procrastination: Googling things I’m worried about.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Teaching scientific psychology courses. A special shout-out to my graduate school mentor James Gross at Stanford University, who modeled for me how to be incredibly thoughtful about teaching.

16. What’s the strangest or most unexpected response you’ve received from a reader?

One of my favorite emails arrived while I was on a flight. The email subject was “I read your book with my therapist and now I’m flying for the first time in 10 years!” I’ve worked hard to overcome a fear of flying, but I still hate being on a plane. I used to be embarrassed about this, but I used it as an example in The Upside of Stress. The reader wrote, “Your story about learning to fly touched me. I’m now practicing my flying with nerves, and I feel great knowing you’re also out there doing it.”

That email really summed up why I write books. I’m not afraid to say it, I write books because I want to change people’s lives. To get that message while I was literally ‘also out there doing it’ made me feel proud and grateful and braver.

17. What’s something you’ve changed your mind about recently?

I used to think I wouldn’t be good at handling the pain of getting a tattoo, so I never got one, even though I love them on other people. I got my first tattoo last April. It turns out that tattoo pain is not difficult compared to other forms of pain I’ve experienced. I now have four tattoos with plans for two more!

18. What are you unwilling to do to sell more books?

I was offered an obscene amount of money to film a show where I would be the psychology expert helping a famous movie star overcome his fear of heights by jumping out of an airplane. There was no scenario where that was going to happen.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre, what would it be?

A time-travel thriller with a tragic romance, with vibes similar to the Korean television dramas Signal and Tomorrow with You.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How hard it is to spend so much time in my own head. I’ve written five nonfiction books, and I can’t seem to do it without isolating myself. I need to immerse myself to the point where I feel like I’m holding the whole book in my head, solving problems and figuring things out almost 24 hours a day. All those hours day after day sitting in a chair staring at a screen evaluating my own thoughts and worrying that I am not doing justice to the research or the stories people shared with me—it’s not great for my well-being. If I didn’t get emails like the one I mentioned above, I would not be an author.

21. What is your new book about?

Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking explores why seeking and sharing joy is an act of courage and compassion, especially when life is difficult. Grounded in psychological science, it provides strategies to create moments of meaning, connection, and celebration, as well as navigate common obstacles to joy, such as envy, guilt, anxiety, and grief. It is also an argument about human nature and why the things that bring us joy reflect the best in us.

You can learn more about Kelly’s book here: Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing.

You’ll find thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: to help you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Daisy Dixon approaches art from two sides. She’s a philosopher at Cardiff University who studies the moral and political questions raised by art, and she’s also a practicing artist herself. Much of her academic work has focused on the uncomfortable territory where aesthetics collides with ethics: oppressive monuments, deceptive art, immoral artists, and the ways creative work can reinforce injustice.

Her new book, Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art, takes those questions far beyond the seminar room. Moving from prehistoric figurines and Renaissance painting to heavy metal and videogames, Dixon asks what makes art dangerous, who gets to decide when it crosses a moral line, and what we should do about it when it does. Her answer is deliberately complicated: art can cause real harm, but censorship carries dangers of its own.

21 Questions with Daisy Dixon

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Quieting that negative voice in my head telling me I can’t do it. It can get rather loud sometimes, and it’s so important to hold on to your convictions and believe in what you have to say.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

I’m new to the game book-wise, but I guess one thing I was mistaken about is thinking that our ideas in our books are going to translate smoothly to social media. Philosophy is something done slowly and meticulously, and I naively thought social media would be an easy platform for it… It is not.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Social media will be the death of me. The number of times I absent-mindedly reach for my phone is incredible. I think I need to get one of those locked boxes that only releases your phone after a certain period of time. I also often just blankly look out the window of my university office.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I’m afraid so. Coming from academia, we get excited just to be cited and engaged with, so I’m used to reading other philosophers’ responses to my work, and I enjoy the criticism! Writing for the general public though has been a lot trickier, and sometimes reviewers have misrepresented what I say, or disagree with my stance in a very dismissive way. I’ve definitely had to grow an even thicker skin this year!

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I read it several times and it’s an emotional rollercoaster. The first time I think I’m a genius. The second time I hate myself and want to burn it all to the ground. I then leave it a few days and ideally get to a more reasonable headspace with it.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Hmm, let’s go Kiss podcasts, Marry speaking gigs, and Kill newsletters (though nothing against newsletters!)

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

I wish I’d started learning creative writing earlier, to express non-fiction via more storytelling. I’ve been trained to create analytic philosophical arguments, with a search for validity and that rare quality: soundness. But writing for the general public has really challenged me to find my voice more and weave philosophy together with real-life emotion and stories.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Like many, my ideas often find me everywhere in the world apart from my actual office. I’ll often be on a train, in class with my students, at the gym, or in the shower. So, I’m constantly reaching for my iPhone Notes App to keep track. Music also helps a lot too—I find certain genres really help me articulate overlooked philosophical concepts.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Some of the best advice I received specifically for book writing was from Professor Dan Hicks who chaired my first ever book event. He told me that the book tour is when you learn what your book is really about. And he was spot on.

10. And the worst?

Some academics in the past have been rather negative about academics writing for the general public, judging that it doesn’t carry high esteem in the university. Times have now changed, and I think bringing academic disciplines to the public and inspiring interest and enacting change beyond the ivory tower is a hugely important endeavour for the humanities.

“The book tour is when you learn what your book is really about.”

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Can I cheat and choose two? There are so many I admire! To pick just two here: Dr Amia Srinivasan and Dr Kate Lister. Both are academics, though Dr Lister has now left university lecturing and is now a full-time public historian. Both have trodden the line between academia and trade writing so beautifully. To maintain rigour but in an entertaining, illuminating way is something I always strive to do.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Books: Dan Jones’s Lion Hearts, Cat Bohannon’s Eve, and Luke Pepera’s Motherland – I have a bad habit of dipping and diving between several books at a time. I also have a booklight (approaching 40 means getting ever-closer to needing glasses), some hand cream, and a scented pillow spray.

13. How did you find your agent?

I was discovered in the depths of what was then known as Twitter during the pandemic. The medieval historian Dan Jones started chatting to me about writing for the public—I was very keen, so he put me in touch with an agent, Georgina Capel, and amazingly, she took me on (cheers George and Dan!).

14. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I never use AI for writing itself, mainly because I want to learn the hard way. I do sometimes use Google’s Gemini for quick access to facts, but it once got something wrong about Hitler’s artistic influences (I already knew the correct answer) so that spooked me a bit.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Presenting. I started teaching and giving talks during my Masters and PhD, and while it was terrifying, it was the best way to learn in the deep end. I now don’t get nervous about public speaking and really enjoy it.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

It really depends on what’s happening in my day job at the university. If I’ve basically zero time because I’m in the middle of a teaching semester, my editor might get only a second draft. If I have more time, it might be the tenth.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Every perfect workday surely must begin with a good night’s sleep. I’m a bad sleeper, so I’ve always been envious of people who get their forty winks. So, waking refreshed at 7 am. Walk to the office in the sunshine. No emails land in my inbox. No one knocks on my door. Start reading and writing from 9 am until lunchtime, with a few breaks. Watch Netflix over a homemade sandwich. Read and write some more until 5 pm. Then walk to the gym and lift some heavy weights. Head home, make dinner and have a massive glass of wine. As you can tell, when I’m in the creative zone, I become a recluse.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

My actual workday starts with me being tired and groggy. Walk to the office in the rain and get wet feet (I live in Wales). I want to start reading and writing philosophy immediately but I get distracted by my email inbox which is constantly pinging. Students and staff knock on my door all day. I often give lectures and seminars, which I do enjoy but they can be rather draining and disruptive to a research day. I then head to the gym and that does still always cheer me up. Then I try to avoid the wine every day because I’m trying to be healthier…

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

A memoir. I’d still like to one day!

20. What is your new book about?

It’s a philosophical history of immoral art, beginning in the stone age all the way through to the art of today. I explore how art can be immoral and the ways it’s been dangerous to society over the centuries. I move from paleolithic figurines to Renaissance paintings, heavy metal music to video games, exploring the nature of obscenity, the problem of immoral artists, how art might cause us to descend into depravity, how it can oppress whole social groups, and the unethical production process itself. I then caution against censorship, and recommend a distinctive form of iconoclasm to solve the problem of immoral art.

21. Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

I think advice on how to avoid perfectionism but while striving to always be better. Maybe that’s too big an ask!

You can learn more about Daisy’s book here: Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

But what if your envy is trying to tell you something?

Social scientist and coach Stacy S. Kim has spent years studying envy, not simply as an unpleasant emotion, but as a source of information about what we want and what we may need to do to achieve it.

That work became her first book, Envy: Why Wanting What They Have Is the Key to Getting What You Want, due out later this month. Which means Stacy is now living through the very phenomenon she studies: watching other authors’ careers unfold while trying to make sense of her own.

In this guest post, written on the cusp of publication, she shares seven unexpected lessons from the experience and what other writers can learn from it.

– Panio Gianopoulos

Now that my book is less than a month from publication, I want to share seven lessons I didn’t expect to learn, and how envying other authors helped me along the way.

1. Envy other authors, study them, then reach out to them.

Before getting a book deal, it drove me bonkers whenever I saw a writer I knew get a clip for a publication I longed to write for, get an agent, or land a book deal. Studying envy, I learned that the greater the pain or discomfort of envy, the closer you are within reach of what you truly desire. Envy also gives you a guide.

I used to just feel yucky and not even read what my envy target has written. But now, whenever I envy other writers, I study their writing, listen to every podcast they’ve done, and then I’ll send a note or DM letting them know specifically what I liked about their work.

By the time I’m done, I have usually figured out what it is they did that I haven’t. And my envy will morph into admiration.

2. You don’t need social media to get a book deal.

My following has been and still is pretty measly. When my daughters were teenagers, I limited their time on social media, so I also couldn’t be a hypocrite.

Thanks to Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer, I learned there are other ways to build your “platform.” I did that with other aspects of my career (coaching and research) and with shorter pieces.

3. Start small.

Susan Shapiro, my writing teacher and author of The Byline Bible, has always said, “Three pages will change your life.” In other words, if you have a book idea, sell it as an article first.

I trusted her but didn’t fully understand her advice until it worked for me. I got that selling a shorter piece is akin to beta testing, that if I couldn’t convince an editor to pay me to write a short piece, I would have a hard time convincing agents they could sell my book to publishers.

What I learned was that when you work with editors who can pay you, they will also help you become a better writer. For example, I’ve always had trouble with endings. Each of the marvelous editors I worked with asked questions that helped me connect what I’ve learned to what my readers would want to learn.

When the editor at The Washington Post told me they would publish my article on envy not only online but also on the front page of their Health and Science section, I knew I was ready to query agents.

4. Borrow from the passions of loved ones.

Ever since I first met my husband in college, I have attended many sporting events just to spend time with him. (You’ll often find me knitting at a baseball game.) But those hours paid off. I have an entire chapter using sports to explain the various ways we can respond to envy thanks to him.

When my older daughter got into K-pop and K-drama, I was appalled because at that point in my life, I was avoiding all things Korean (which I deemed sexist and authoritarian). But that too became an article, and Korea became a minor character in my book.

My younger daughter had considered a career in video games. She introduced me to The Watermelon Game. I’m addicted to it. But I figured out that when I’m stressed or anxious, playing a game (or two, or three) will calm me. I realized that it helped to interrupt the negative voices in my head, which Ethan Kross describes expertly in Chatter. (Or his book justifies my vice.)

5. Don’t go hunting for perfect systems; you will be forced to change them.

I am embarrassed to admit how much time I’ve spent searching for perfect apps, and then learning to perfect my use of them. Don’t get me wrong, Scrivener and Notion were indeed helpful. But I regret the time I spent trying to make those apps work perfectly for me.

When I got a book deal, I was forced to switch to Microsoft Word. Then, when I started working with my publicist, I was forced to use Google Sheets.

I should have listened to Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, and realized my tweaking was just shallow work.

6. Hire a publicist to amplify your effort.

I spent most of my advance on my publicist. It kills me how much money I spent. I’m grateful my husband said I would be foolish not to work so hard at something and then punt when I’m inches away from a first down and in the red zone. Daniel Pink’s book, The Power of Regret, also helped me see that I was at risk for having a “boldness regret.”

At the same time, hiring a publicist and having an in-house PR and Marketing Team doesn’t mean you can focus on other things. I thought I’d be able to hand off the work to them.

Nope! I have come to realize that I have to work alongside them. They would pitch for me, but I had to be able to work with them on the angles of their pitches. And, once they secured something, I had to then follow through by doing homework by studying the podcasts, or writing the pieces.

7. Prepare to become an event planner.

I had heard that book tours were tougher to do. I admit I didn’t think it would apply to me because I hired a publicist, had an in-house team, and had speaking engagements in the past. But, again, I didn’t absorb this warning.

Bookstores can’t afford to give up their labor and space for debut authors who haven’t proven they can bring in a crowd. Publishers only spend money on events for a small number of titles. So I planned events my publisher would invite booksellers to, so they could sell books “off-site.”

I not only tapped into those who hired me to speak in the past, but I also teamed up with my writing community, my church, my knitting friends, the schools I attended, and non-profit organizations my family volunteers for. I’m so grateful they could help with the venue, but sending out the invites, ordering refreshments, planning the “entertainment,” coordinating everyone involved, and promoting all those different events took time and energy I didn’t expect to spend. But here, again, is where envy can help.

When you examine your envy as I did, it can teach you what activities you need to learn to do what you love, how to deepen your connections with people you admire, and how to serve those you care about. And, while I still envy all the big-name authors with long lists of cities they will be hitting with their book tours, I know how to turn that envy into learning new party-planning skills, reconnecting with people who have already supported me, and sharing how envy can be harnessed for good with my (future) readers.

When Mark Epstein published Thoughts Without a Thinker 31 years ago, Buddhism and Western psychotherapy were still an unusual pairing. A psychiatrist and longtime student of vipassana meditation, Epstein set out to translate Buddhist ideas about the self, suffering, and insight into the psychological language of his own profession.

That book became the beginning of a remarkable writing life. Epstein has since written eight books exploring the intersection of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, The Trauma of Everyday Life, and The Zen of Therapy. Thoughts Without a Thinker itself became a modern classic, arriving well before mindfulness entered the therapeutic mainstream.

Now, with a new edition and a new preface, Epstein has returned to the book that launched his writing career, and to the ideas that have occupied him ever since.

21 Questions with Mark Epstein

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My friend Jonathan Cott sending me every book about Zen poetry that he knew about. Those poems began to make sense to me as I read them over and over in the context of writing about my individual psychotherapy sessions in The Zen of Therapy. I was trying to find a kernel of truth in the midst of a quotidian therapy hour and the poems led me there.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That it requires inspiration.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

I very rarely procrastinate. I’m the kind of person who likes to get the thing that’s hanging over me over with so I don’t have to be anxious about it.

4. Do you read your reviews?

If I know about them, I always read them. But I never read the Amazon customer reviews. Or more accurately, I once read one that was unfavorable and it took a long time to get it out of my head. I haven’t read any since.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I email it to myself so it won’t get lost.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Podcasts have begun to be, or to seem, repetitive, especially when the interviewer has a list of previously configured questions. Newsletters I know nothing about. Speaking gigs are often welcome, except for ones on Zoom.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Going to the opera.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

New ideas tend to come out of everyday conversations or happenstance. When I’m writing, I’m always trolling for good little tidbits, things people say in passing. On occasion, when on a silent retreat, a new thought or new idea will just happen. Almost as if it comes out of nowhere. I have a little notebook that I keep for such things. Once, for instance, the title Advice Not Given, appeared in my mind while I was on retreat. It was a good title and then I had to write the book that went with it.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Never do a psychotherapy session on a full bladder.

10. And the worst?

That the therapist should be a blank screen.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Bob Dylan. I mean, how could you not admire that career? The guy doesn’t quit and he’s brilliant and dedicated. He gives so much.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Robert A.F. Thurman: Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa; Wolfgang Koeppen, Pigeons on the Grass; Sam Roberts, Are They Dead Yet?; Adam Phillips, The Life You Want; Ian Baruma, Stay Alive; Rachel Cusk, Life of M; Rachel Aviv, You Won’t Get Free of It; Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter; Gisele Pelicot, A Hymn to Life; Harold Bloom, The Man Who Read Everything

13. How did you find your agent?

She is my sister’s husband’s sister. I had no idea what she did, but when we first met I was talking about writing my first book and she said, “I’m an agent.” She’s been my agent for more than 30 years now.

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

I never thought of myself as a writer, I thought I was a psychiatrist. So when I started writing, I didn’t know there were writing rules. I guess writing without being a writer is breaking some sort of rule!

15. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I write on a computer, that’s about it. I wrote all my books before AI was a thing.

16. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

When I found an editor who I felt understood where I was coming from and what I was trying to say (the late Ann Godoff), I always listened to her and took her very generous advice.

17. How many drafts before you show your editor?

The way I write, for any given chapter, I always start at the top and tinker with it when I first sit down and read it through until I get to the place that is not yet written. So, technically, a given chapter or essay or piece is a single draft, but it’s been worked over a lot in the process of its development. When there’s nothing left to fix, I will send it off or put it away.

18. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I have done all my writing one day a week. The rest of the days I am seeing or talking to patients. So that day is special. I usually sit down first thing and work for about four hours. Then I’ll take a break to eat or exercise or something, then, if I have the energy, I’ll sit down again for a couple of more hours.

19. How does that compare to your actual workday?

In my regular day I will generally speak with seven or eight people for an hour at a time. My writing day is the inverse of my actual workday.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

That I don’t miss it.

21. What is your new book about?

My newest book is a reissue of a book I wrote 31 years ago called Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective. It was my attempt to translate Buddhist thought into the psychological language of our time. It has a new preface, which is actually the latest thing I have written, that attempts to describe why the book is still relevant. The preface, and the book, is more about what Buddhists call ‘insight’ than it is about mindfulness or meditation. What can Buddhism really teach us about ourselves? Are its insights the same or different as Freud’s?

You can learn more about Mark’s book here: Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Maggie Jackson writes about the mental habits that shape how we move through the world. Her first book, Distracted, examined the costs of fractured attention long before the subject became a cultural obsession. In Uncertain, she explores the uneasy, often disorienting experience of not knowing what comes next or what to make of what’s in front of us.

Jackson makes the counterintuitive case that being unsure can deepen curiosity, sharpen thinking, and make us more open to new possibilities—an argument that feels especially resonant in a culture that rewards speed, certainty, and instant answers.

With Uncertain now out in paperback, it seemed like a perfect moment to revisit the book—not least because its central idea applies so naturally to writing a book—and to hear Jackson reflect on writing with the same curiosity and openness she brings to every subject.

21 Questions with Maggie Jackson

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Oodles of silence, strong tea, and support from both my family and, oddly enough, from strangers. It inspires me enormously when someone I meet in passing or at a party gets excited by the premise of my project. The more questions they ask, the more I know I’m onto something new and original.

2. What’s the thing that most people get wrong about being a writer?

That it’s easy. Yes, it’s easy to put words on paper. It may even be easier to consider ourselves writers today when AI generates facile, seemingly impressive prose. But being a good writer takes patience, grit, discipline, curiosity, and more. Writing can be a joy and a revelation, but most of the time, its rewards are in reverse proportion to its ease.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

As a nonfiction writer, I sometimes put off writing by doing more research, although that’s not always a bad thing as those last little pushes into the unknown can yield the best nuggets. In general, I’m not allergic to a little procrastination because often delay is a kind of fallow time, a momentary pause that allows our minds to synthesize, curate, and connect the dots about our work.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes. Praise helps carry me through the long days in the writing cave and constructive criticism can be a learning opportunity. That doesn’t mean I’m not pained by reviews that I think are unfair but bringing a book out into the world means that at some point you’ll be the target of someone’s ire. That’s the nature of the game.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Set it aside for a few days or a week to gain perspective.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Kiss them all. I love going out into the world with my ideas and seeing what happens, especially in real-time. Questions from interviewers, listeners calling into a radio show, readers at a signing, or audience members at a talk all teach me so much about a topic, even after I’ve been researching it for years!

7. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

This might be a bit boring but: starting work on time. Even if the timing is self-imposed, I like to be at my desk at the same hour each morning, because I think best early in the day.

8. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Taking mini-breaks—they’re more restorative than I once assumed.

9. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I find loads of new ideas by reading widely and talking to as diverse an array of people as I can. Finding The Big Idea for a book that will take years of my life is another story. Mainly, I keep an inner eye on whatever themes haunt me, pique my curiosity, and seem both timely and timeless. As for tracking my ideas, my working life is carried out as much on paper as in the digital world.

10. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

I had the great fortune to take a class with John Hersey, who pressed upon his students the importance of including telling detail. Whether you’re describing an idea, a scene, or a person, the particular brings your writing to life. Prose that lacks detail is like a tree that’s lost its leaves: bare.

11. And the worst?

“The world isn’t waiting for this book.” What a deflating comment in the guise of advice.

Anyhow, it can be a fool’s errand to feverishly chase whatever flavor or fashion the world wants at any moment. Instead, stay true to your inner voice and innate originality. Maybe the world just doesn’t yet know that it needs your book!

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

A pen and notebook. A few travel guides. Joyful, Anyway by Kate Bowler. Why Does the Universe Exist? by Jim Holt. Talking Classics by Mary Beard. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. And a lamp.

13. How did you find your agent?

Through a mom-friend who’s also a fellow journalist.

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

“Write about what you know.” Instead, I write about what I want to know. The more mysterious and tangled the question, the more curious I am.

15. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

As a science writer with a focus on tech’s impact on thinking, I’m acutely aware of how easy it is to defer to AI, and how often LLMs distort our metacognitive abilities to think about our thinking. As well, studies show that most people aren’t even aware of A.I.’s deep influence on their cognition. For all these reasons, I don’t use LLMs to write my articles and books, or even email. In research, A.I. is increasingly unavoidable but I carefully check the sourcing and accuracy of A.I.-generated search results, especially those unasked-for summaries. To guard my focus, I don’t use notifications and keep clocks hidden away.

16. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Staying energetic. Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint, so having the inner fire to keep at it is crucial. As well, being out in the field reporting from places as diverse as robotics labs, operating rooms, or artist studios can be grueling, so I try hard to take care of my self so I can preserve my zip.

17. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Countless.

18. Can you describe your ideal workday?

My ideal workday starts with a swim in the Atlantic ocean rain or shine year-roundthe joy and exhilaration are amazing—and ends with a walk. When I’m writing a book, I welcome breaks but not interruptions and do everything I can to be in a quiet place. As well, I used to race from task to task. But since discovering that short pauses boost memory, I try to do nothing for a few minutes at natural break points, such as after long interviews or bursts of complex reading. Slices of “fallow time” help the mind digest and synthesize and remember. I’ve learned over the years that working better doesn’t have to mean working breathlessly.

19. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Life happens! But I still aim to assemble those pieces of the puzzle as best as I can. I have also learned from experience that a “bad” day of writing is often followed by a day when the pieces fall into place, at least a bit.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How much lingering in the unknown teaches us, whether it’s allowing yourself a looser chapter outline or not overly scripting an interview.

21. Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

I wish we would all band together and demand that all organizations pay authors! While we are well-paid for speaking gigs at companies and conferences, we’re expected to work for free at far too many festivals, libraries, and even signings. While such appearances help us promote our books, we still should be compensated for our time and expertise, especially if writing is our day job. After all, our work keeps the fires of literature burning brightly for all.

You can learn more about Maggie’s book here: Uncertain: The Wonder and Wisdom of Being Unsure.

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

To explore this topic, I hosted a Q&A with India Lena González, senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, where she oversees several of the publication’s debut-author series, including “New Nonfiction” and “5 Over 50.” Her job gives her an unusually close view of how emerging writers get discovered, what makes a first book stand out, and which signals matter before an editor even starts reading.

During our conversation, we covered:

• What India looks for when choosing debut nonfiction writers

• Why the publicist’s pitch needs to sound like the author

• How writers can become more discoverable before their book comes out

• Why literary community matters more than most writers realize

• How editors think about an author’s social media presence

• What Poets & Writers’ 5 Over 50 series reveals about publishing later in life

• Why authors shouldn’t panic if publicity doesn’t happen immediately around pub date

Below, you’ll find our full conversation, lightly edited for clarity and readability.

You can check out The New Nonfiction 2026 here, and Poets & Writers is also hosting a virtual reading and celebration with this year’s featured writers on Wednesday, September 23rd. If you’re curious about 5 Over 50, last year’s feature is available here; the 2026 edition will be published in a few weeks.

India Lena González Author Insider Q&A

Full Transcript

The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Panio Gianopoulos: So India, how long have you been at Poets & Writers?

India Lena González: I’ve been at Poets & Writers for, I think, going on seven years now. So I started as a fellow and then worked my way up from there. So it’s been quite a while.

Panio Gianopoulos: And what would you say, like, not to put you on the spot, well, you’re kind of on the spot because you’re the guest, but what is your mission at Poets & Writers Magazine?

India Lena González: Yeah. So for Poets & Writers Magazine, our mission is to really democratize access to all aspects of how one can become a writer. So we have tons of databases for writers on the magazine side of things because we’re both a nonprofit and a magazine. So we have both aspects working together. We’re constantly looking to kind of uncover and reveal to writers how to get published, how to do this thing that’s called being a writer. What does that look like? It looks a million different ways depending on who you are, what you’re interested in. We’re interested in giving writers access to all these different databases for small presses. As you mentioned, there’s like our contest database, which I think is our most well-known feature for grants and awards. So people know how to submit, what to submit, what industry insiders are looking for. And then we also, of course, have series where we talk with published authors and you kind of get the insight of how their journey went and how they got to where they are today.

Panio Gianopoulos: Well, so you mentioned a series, but you do a lot of different things, right? You’ve got The New Nonfiction feature. You’ve got the Five Over 50 series. So let’s just start with The New Nonfiction feature because we are so many nonfiction writers here. When you put this together, how do you source it? How do you decide? I mean, I know I curate things for the Next Big Idea Club, but we’re pretty focused on certain genres of self-help and social science and business, whereas all nonfiction, that seems overwhelming. How do you choose?

India Lena González: Yes. So for The New Nonfiction, we’re focused specifically on creative nonfiction. So that helps to narrow the pool a great deal. And then on top of that, a lot of it is what publicists are sending in to us. And then it’s also research. So I try to even the playing field. Even if your publicist did not send your book, I want to make sure I’m looking at every possible option available to us. There are certain presses I’m always looking at. Social media is also a great way for me to find new voices. So it’s all of those things in one that we use to then source. And then from there, you kind of have your editorial decision making process, which we can get into as well in terms of what stands out versus other things.

Panio Gianopoulos: Yeah, let’s get into it right now because that’s super interesting. Yeah. You used the phrase “rise above the noise.” So what does that look like from an editorial perspective? Like what makes the debut stand out?

India Lena González: Yeah, for new nonfiction, my understanding of creative nonfiction and sort of the thesis statement that I believe it’s making as a genre is that you’re trying to make meaning of the world around you. And you’re putting yourself in context, which I’m stealing from one of our authors this year who was in the series and said that she learned this from her MFA teacher. But all of writing is putting yourself in context, specifically creative nonfiction. So when I’m reading these books, I’m looking to see what is the context that you’re placing yourself in. And how are you doing that? So what’s the framework for your story? And then more importantly, how are you telling that story? I’m really interested not just in does this story sound interesting, but also how do you uncover your inner and outer world? And how do you make meaning of what it means to be alive right now in today’s day and age? How do you make meaning of your childhood? How do you make meaning of your dreams in the future? All of that is important to see the nitty gritty and the authenticity of struggling through that. So when you see an author who’s really intelligently thinking through these problems and also has the heart, so both the head and the heart combined, that to me pulls me in as a reader and that makes me want to learn more. That makes me want to spotlight them because we’re looking for a connection. Ultimately, I think all readers want to connect with the author, especially for this genre. So the more that you can pull someone in and say, this is my world and this is how it feels to be me, the more I’m on board with your journey.

Panio Gianopoulos: Right. So I imagine this would really push, you said creative nonfiction, but it seems like memoir would really thrive in this kind of, with this rubric, right? Because it is so personal and it is so about context and intimacy and voice.

India Lena González: Yeah, memoir, anything that’s hybrid, creative nonfiction, and also essay collections. We never have enough of those, I feel. So I’m always looking for more essay collections, but there is that personal aspect to creative nonfiction, regardless of what the thing is within that. I think memoir specifically, it gets really personal. So when someone handles that with a deft hand and has the craft to tell a story that might not be easy to tell without falling into certain clichés or tropes, I’m looking at how many different angles into that topic they’re able to manage. And then what does it come out to in the end? For this year’s feature, we have a wonderful hybrid memoir from Nita Noveno, Mud on the Moon. She combines family photographs with history and personal asides to the reader that are like letters. And then she imagines her father’s coming to America. It’s all these different components together. So then in those hybrid forms, you’re looking for like, how well do you braid together all these different sources that you’re pulling from? in order to make something that works well overall and has like a very carefully tended to ecosystem as a book.

Panio Gianopoulos: Well, it’s nice that you’re, nice is a weak word, but it’s reassuring that you’re championing experimental work to some degree, right? Where they’re taking formal chances. And because it does seem like... So much of publishing has gotten more conservative, right? Everybody is nervous to take a risk. They want a known thing and people aren’t really being rewarded. I will say for my years being a book editor, when somebody would submit a personal essay collection, we’d think like, oh God, this is just going to languish in the bookstore. Like that part of the bookstore, like good luck. So you always wanted it to be like, there were certain sections which were like death for a book. And one was like the personal essay section, unless you were like David Sedaris, right? Right. And then it was like comedy was terrible. Like nobody’s going to buy your book there. So you’re always trying to like travel kind of sucked. So you’re trying to like steer them away. And to your point about having like a theme, we would try and move it away from like personal essays to like, oh no, this is a book about something else. We can put it in more general nonfiction. So it’s, it is heartening to know that you’re like, actually, because there are great personal essay collections.

India Lena González: Yeah, I think because we’re editors—and I don’t work at a press—I have no interest in the bottom line for a book. So I kind of have the freedom of just taking in the book for what it is and looking at it on a craft level. I think because we have such a literary focus, it always is about the quality. So I’m not thinking about an author’s platform, not even necessarily their bio. I mean, honestly, I take that information in, but unlike an agent or an editor you’d work at in the press, I don’t have any interest in selling it. My interest is just in how well written is this book? How much does it move me as a reader? And then I think that good writing wins in the end, at least in terms of like our editorial approach for this series.

Panio Gianopoulos: Thank God. Okay. It’s always nice to hear when someone’s like, I just like good writing. So let’s talk about emerging writers, right? New writers, first books coming out. So what is, have you noticed, like, are there any patterns or certain things? And this is a very general question, but like certain things you notice, like, okay, this is getting them attention because you mentioned, you know, you find these things. What have you noticed?

India Lena González: So I will say that the publicist matters, not in terms of who they are, but just how they pitch your book to any place for a review. If the way that they’re pitching it or the framework that they’re using doesn’t actually work well with the way that the book has been written, then there’s a discrepancy that doesn’t really call to me. It kind of actually makes me not want to read the book. So when I’m looking at the pitch, if I get a pitch email, I’m looking at the language that the publicist is using. I want it to match what’s on the inside of the book so that the way that you’re even telling me the synopsis of the story, it should match what I would get when I open up the book so I can get a sense of what that author’s tone is like and how they’re actually going to relay their message, not just the content. So I think sometimes for nonfiction, it’s just like, well, here’s the story. But I also want to know how the author is going to tell that story to me because that’s going to make me either buy into it or look elsewhere. So that’s important. I’m also looking at if I’m finding it through research online or even through social media, I’m looking at the synopsis that’s on the back of the book. So like that blurb, that copy. If that also doesn’t speak to or like resonate with what the author would write themselves, then that for me turns me off because it doesn’t give me another way into it. So there’s like layers to it before I would even read a PDF or necessarily open up a book. There’s like a little bit of a criteria there.

India Lena González: Did the publicist get your voice right in terms of how they presented you? Great. You might want to have that conversation with them to be like, how are you pitching the book? What’s the framework? What are you leading with? And then outside of that, just in terms of what’s on the outside of the book, does that also speak to what you have actually written? And I think maybe having some kind of creative control over that or conversation around that would be helpful so that it really is representing you as authentically as possible.

Panio Gianopoulos: Well, that’s incredibly interesting to hear because I think a lot of times authors will defer to their publicist, right? They’ll think, okay, well, she or he knows what they’re doing. This is just my book. I’m going to let them present it this way. But what you’re saying essentially is it really does have to represent your voice and your approach. It’s not enough just to say this is a book about the trials of motherhood. You’ve got to be really more specific to the voice.

India Lena González: Yeah, and I think that some publicists are better at doing that innately than others. So you don’t really know, right, how the publicist that you have as an author. But I think that at least having that conversation or asking like, hey, what does that pitch email look like just out of curiosity or starting to open up that conversation would be helpful because if you have a great publicist who really catches on your tone and is able to pick that up and then transfer that, wonderful. But if you don’t, I don’t think there’s any harm in being like, Maybe we can slightly rework this or at least try to make sure that it’s a fair representation because I want to care about your book. So if the publicist is just giving me pure content, but there’s no way in to say why I should care about your interpretation of said event, then for me, it’s hard to make that connection as a potential reader.

Panio Gianopoulos: Chris, did you have a question?

Chris: I did. And India, thank you. You basically answered it. So well. It’s true: my publicist comes from PRH, Rodale, and I have been as a first time and maybe only time author hesitant. I’ve asked a little bit about how she’s pitching it. I really don’t know. So and even the press release when I saw it, well, it had part of my name misspelled. And several other things that were in error or repetitious and things like that. So I guess you’re giving me a bit of the permission or strength to ask to see the pitch. I have been hesitant thinking they know what they’re doing. But having done this in the arts myself for many years, I know what that means. And I know that you have to know both who you’re speaking to and what you’re speaking about. So thank you for that. I’m still underwater. Thanks.

India Lena González: Of course, I understand. And also it’s like, no one’s going to know the content of the book better than the author. So the publicist will know how to angle it, but they also don’t know your world the way that you do. So in my mind, there’s no harm in at least being clear about your world. And sometimes the publicist reads the book all the way through. Sometimes maybe they don’t, depending on what’s on their plate. So we have to be reasonable in terms of like, don’t expect them to know you the way that you know you. And so I think that there can be some diplomatic way of like working through to make sure that you come across in that pitch more than the general idea of let me sell this to you.

Chris: And my book is about letter writing. So the aspect of communication is the bread and butter of it. So thank you.

Panio Gianopoulos: That’s a great question. So we’re talking now about people with books, right? But you mentioned you scour pretty far and wide to find things. So say I’m an unpublished writer or I have a book coming out, but maybe down the line. Is there any advice you could give me as far as ways to increase the odds that someone like you would eventually notice my work? Where would I focus? Is it Substack? Is it personal blogs? Is it literary journals? What do you recommend?

India Lena González: Yeah, I think Substack is great for like building that platform for people to get a sense of who you are and what that book is going to be about. For me personally, I think just because my generation is social media. So if you like reach out and get my attention and your book is there, then I’m looking at it. That’s something for sure. Those are the main ways. I also think it’s important to have a good community because I’m also, when I work with authors, I also then see who their friends are. I see who they’re hanging out with, who they’re going on retreats with, all these things. And if I see that you’re already kind of vetted by someone I’ve worked with before, I’m like, oh yeah, they’re in the same network. This is a person that I could work with easily. And so I think having a good community, a good literary community, not for the sake of necessarily someone seeing you, but just for the sake of building people who are in your corner who can vouch for you, that I think always comes back around. Because if I can be in conversation and I’m wondering about an author and someone can speak to who that person is, then that gives that kind of like personal approval of, okay, this might be someone that I want to look into further and things of that sort.

Panio Gianopoulos: Mm-hmm. It is remarkable how many things happen because a friend recommends you. I do a feature, 21 Questions, and one of the questions is, how did you find your agent? And I swear, I’ve not run the data, but 90 percent of them say ‘“Oh, my writer friend recommended me to...” Everybody seems to find their agent that way. But it makes sense because... There’s just so many people and you want to vet them a little bit. It’s like, okay, well, I don’t know if the writing’s any good, but I know at least this person’s not a total a-hole (presumably).

India Lena González: Yeah, I think from my end, I’m also looking at the personality of the person before I’m choosing. Because, you know, for something like this series, you have five slots, but you have so many writers out there. And at a certain point in time, everyone is equally talented in terms of like what they bring to the page. So then you’re looking for like, what’s the extra thing that stands out. And I’m personally invested in, will you be easy for me to work with? Because I have a lot to manage and it’s already going to be back and forth. I want to know that I’m investing in someone who will work well with me and you can’t always guess that. So sometimes I will look up the author on YouTube and see if you’ve done a talk or anything like that to see like, what did they sound like? How gracious are they to somebody else? I’ll look at if you’re on social media, what are the captions for your posts? Like I’m trying to gather some more personal data to make a decision if it’s between two people and it’s really hard. To be like who will be a person that will be the easiest person to work with and I think will also write an essay for a magazine that will be helpful for our readers and not just self-serving and just in terms of promotion but will also be like really showing other writers how you got to where you are, the struggles that you had to overcome and how that book came to be. If I feel that you can do that then that’s pretty much a shoo-in for sure.

Panio Gianopoulos: I’m a little scared because I really should go back to my social media. I feel like I post funny pictures of cats and you’d be like, this guy is not for real.

India Lena González: I love that stuff. I’m all about a person being a person. If someone’s overly professional on social media, it’s also a red flag for me. So I love to see what their interests are. It doesn’t have to be my interests. I just want to see that you’re passionate about something. But you’re really looking to be like, is this person going to make me have to work overtime or do I feel like this could be a smooth process? And sometimes I’ve guessed correctly and sometimes I’ve guessed incorrectly. And then you’re stuck with what you’re stuck with and you just kind of push through it. And in the end, it always evens out. But, you know, there are sometimes bumps in the road for sure.

Panio Gianopoulos: Stacey, your question?

Stacey: Yeah. Hi, India. I’m just curious, like, what does a normal day look like for you at work?

India Lena González: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I, as a senior editor, I manage all of our debut author series. And so that goes within each different issue that we have of the six issues that we have in a year. Right now we have four debut author series for poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction. And then as was mentioned earlier, we have our Five Over 50 series, which is for writers who are debuting after the age of 50. At any given point in time, I’m working on one of those series. And if I’m not doing that, then I’m working with authors for our online series. So a lot of emailing, a lot of receiving pitch emails, a lot of editing authors that I’m working with or reading a lot of books, trying to make decisions like that, and then speaking with the editor in chief about that, as well as hosting events. I do events for these authors as well. So things of that sort. It just depends on what part of the production cycle we’re in. And then, of course, like as we get closer to publishing an issue, we’re all reading the book through, we’re editing each other’s work, we’re handling any last-minute details like that.

Stacey: Thank you. That’s great.

Panio Gianopoulos: You mentioned the Five Over 50 series, which I think is great. I just turned 50 last year or so. Like finally, I know every time I would turn a new decade, like I turned 30 and I’d be like, oh, I’m not doing that. Like 10 under 30, missed that one. And then 40, I’m like, oh, missed 40 under 40. So I was like, all right, I got another shot. Five over 50. There’s no cap. I like the upside. So what inspired it and how long have you been doing that?

India Lena González: So I believe that this year is the 11th year that we’ve done Five Over 50. So last year was our full decade and we did like a full retrospective where we looked back on like all the 50 writers we had included thus far. So yeah, we’ve been doing it for a while. It’s one of the later series that we added, but really it falls in line with our belief that there is no expiration date on a dream. And we also don’t believe that we should put an age cap on like when you reach your goal of first publishing a book. And so there’s so much beauty and wisdom to be learned by listening to and reading these essays by these authors. And they really talk about their whole life journey that got them to where they are today. And for me personally, I’m not 50, but just in starting the series and being able to have the privilege of working on it, it was something that was really like, it’s such a gift for me to be able to work with these writers and then to see what they have to say about the life that they have lived and how they got where they are. And the interesting thing is that no one ever wishes that they had published earlier. Some people think that time is a necessary evil, but most think it really is a gift. I think of it like making a stew: the longer it sits, the tastier it is, because you get all these different flavors. I think of a book similarly. Life has ebbs and flows and sometimes you have to focus on family or you have to focus on job and income. And so I think it’s unrealistic to believe that at 25, we can all drop everything and write the next best book. And then that can be your entire career. So when you hear people that have like spent time being parents, they’ve spent time focusing on like completely different communities and really offering themselves to those things. When they do come to writing a book, the quality is much better. There’s like the maturity to it is just nothing like it. Emotional maturity, that sort of understanding of how the world works. And they all say that time, even though they didn’t want it necessarily, it was the best gift because that was the thing that like now they finally have something to say. And the urgency to saying that is really felt when you read these books. So I think it’s like a great, I think more people should do that. The older the better—as close to 100 as you can get, really. That would be great. We’re always like, can you get a 70, 80, 90-year-old in there? That would be wonderful. So yeah, I think it’s really wonderful to spotlight that because there’s so much we can learn when you do debut when you’re older. Whereas sometimes when I’m working with people who debut and they are younger, they may have less to say. It may be a great book,bBut if you’re really looking to learn something from them, you could still see and hear the youth and the ego and the things like that doesn’t serve anyone outside of them. So I think that reading that series in particular, just for me as a reader of it, has been really, really great. And really heartening.

Panio Gianopoulos: Right. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I remember when I was like 25 and I finished my first novel and I was going to try to sell it. And I was having lunch with this author who was, I don’t know, 50 or something. And I told him very excitedly [about my novel]… And he said, yeah, you know, I think it’s hard to write a good novel if you’re under 30 or 35. You just haven’t lived enough. And I was so indignant. I was like, what are you talking about? You don’t know anything! It’s great! But now I understand his point in the sense of, like, you can certainly write a good, exciting novel when you’re young, but it’s [rarely] about emotional depth. It’s usually something else. Whereas someone who’s lived through some stuff and gotten kicked in the teeth a little bit and dealt with everything—you feel it. I love reading books where you’re like, wow, this author, she has had a full life. There’s a lot to draw from here. Whereas poetry, I think you can get away with being young. It’s more abstract. You can have great poetry. Knock that out when you’re 15 if you want. Well, maybe not 15. But novels, creative nonfiction, I think a little older is better.

India Lena González: Yeah. I mean, just prose in general, you have a lot more language that you’re working with. So there’s a lot more mistakes that can be made. There’s a lot more that you cannot manage well. So I think that when you have many years of experience in different professions that you’re pulling from and different things you’ve done outside of writing, all of that shows up on the page, even if you don’t think that it does, you can still feel like, for instance, someone I recently worked with, they spent a long time representing underprivileged people in court and that level of care for someone’s story that’s not your own and it comes from a background that’s completely different from your own. That shows up in her fiction writing, and she could not have done that if she was younger. It’s because you’ve spent years dedicated to other people and their livelihood that by the time you focus on telling stories that are coming from you, all of a sudden it’s very worldly, it’s expansive, and you can really feel the humanity underneath it because that’s what life, I think, really pulls up. The more you live, in my experience, the more you have to really come to the table with a lot more humanity.

Panio Gianopoulos: Yeah, absolutely. And to build on that, I find that, and maybe I’m just embarrassing myself, but when I was younger, you know, I was so wrapped up in this idea of like, I want to be a writer, I want to write books. And it’s almost like you get it backwards, right? You may want the experience, but the book itself is really what needs to come into existence. And I feel like the older you get, the more you’re like, oh, actually, this is not the book I want to write. The book I want to write, it can totally surprise you. It can be something completely different or something that comes from your own experience. Whereas sometimes I think writers, young writers, force themselves like, okay, I need to write a book. I need to write a novel. I need to write this. So they force it and it can be perfectly fine. But there’s a difference between a book you want to write and a book you need to write. And I feel like you can read that. You feel that on the page as a reader. You’re like, wow, she had to get the story out. The story was burning inside of her. And just as a reader, I honestly do feel like I can tell a difference.

India Lena González: Yeah. Yes, you can absolutely tell a difference. Agreed.

Panio Gianopoulos: Chris, questions?

Chris: Well, on that, then India, we’ll have two questions for you. The first is the longer one, but I’ll end with the short one. The longer one is, well, how did you, given what Panio just said, how did you come to writing? What’s on your mind? What’s on your desk? And my very short question, which I hope you’ll tell, is your Instagram handle because it’s not clear.

India Lena González: Yeah, absolutely. So how I came to writing was first through loving to read growing up. My mom had a journalism degree, so she was really not hard on me and my sister, but she was really clear about like articulating yourself clearly in an essay for school. And she really painstakingly like worked with us to make sure that we’re writing to the best of our ability. And from that, my love of writing grew. It became really fun to write these creative pieces for English class I majored in writing for undergrad, got an MFA in it, and then continued in the community like this as an editor, which I’ve really enjoyed being an editor outside of being a writer. The way that works together, the marriage of the two has been really fulfilling for me. So that’s kind of how I come to it. What’s on my desk right now are a lot of poetry books because I’m focusing on our debut poets selection, which is coming up. So way too many poetry books, almost 100 is what’s on my desk. That’s on my mind too. Yeah, we have 10 slots for debut poets, which is more than the other series. The others are just five. So it’s an even larger pool to pick from. So that’s what’s on my mind for the next week or two. And then my Instagram handle. Yes, it is. It’s your girl India. @itsyagurlindia. Wanted to keep it very casual. Yep.

Panio Gianopoulos: So this is more of a broader kind of industry question, but a lot of times we talk about different formats of publishing, right? Hybrid publishing has become very popular, and self-publishing happens. At Poets & Writers, do you consider hybrid publishing? Do you consider self-published books, or is it only traditional publishing that you guys check out?

India Lena González: Only traditional publishing. Although we do have, we’ve talked about hybrid publishing and self-publishing in certain articles. When we’re looking for books to cover, we’re looking at books that have gone through a traditional publisher only because that helps manage the quality of the content for us. So if we were to have a wider playing field, that would be a little bit harder to manage all of those books. But yes, traditional publishing.

Panio Gianopoulos: And do you find that, I guess... Let me try to rephrase this. Do you think that there’s a point at which you would change that policy or you just think we want it vetted to some degree? There’s just too many options. So we’re just going to stick with traditional.

India Lena González: You know, maybe. I think everything changes over time, right? Because of the industry and where it’s going. I could for sure see that. But that hasn’t been something that we’ve spoken about in great detail. It’s just something that we abide by for right now. So I think that, you know, should things change, for sure. But, um, I think that self-publishing is a wonderful way to get published if you don’t want to wait on a publisher to bet on you. I also think that it requires a lot of resources too. So I often give talks for poets and writers where a lot of writers are asking about self-publishing, especially for poetry and things of that sort. So we do have those discussions about the pros and cons of what it could be to be self-published versus to wait for a traditional publisher. And I think either way, it’s great. It’s just a matter of timeline, how quickly you want to get something out. And if you have the financial resources and the time to really commit to what that involves, which is also a lot to ask of someone.

Panio Gianopoulos: Right. And also you mentioned a real interest in more sort of experimentation on the page, especially in narrative nonfiction. And yet there’s a kind of tension there because a lot of publishers don’t want to take risks. Like, what the hell? There’s a recipe in this? There’s like a letter to your dead mom? Like, I thought this was a book about this. So how do you reconcile that? Is it just a lot of indie presses or university presses?

India Lena González: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly how I reconcile it. A lot of indie presses that do both like poetry and prose, they have the most experimental nonfiction, in my opinion. And it’s still because when you are experimenting to that extent, it can go wrong really quickly. There can be too much that you’re trying to manage in one go. So when you do have an editor that you’re working with, who is able to really rein that in for you, then by the time I get to a book that is highly experimental, it has already been shaped in a way that really works for that storytelling. And it’s already been worked through with someone else. So all I have to do is say like, love the experiment, see how it’s operating, totally stand by it. Let’s promote it as opposed to kind of sitting there wondering like, oh, but if you have like one more set of eyes, maybe you could have made this through line a little bit clearer. And, you know, if you’re going to go experimental, I think it has to be really crisp in the way that it’s done. And it requires an even greater editorial eye, which is something you really want to have. If you’re doing more traditional writing, there may be more leeway. But smaller presses like Sarabande Books and Red Hen Press come to mind. They publish really experimental work and they are very open in that regard. And so I find that there’s no shortage of kind of like weird nonfiction out there. If you go to the smaller places, which we like to do, we don’t just like to do big five. I like to have a good mix of them. So it’s like smaller with the big five for sure.

Panio Gianopoulos: Nikki, you have a question?

Nikki: Yeah, I’ve heard rumors of a poetry renaissance happening, and I’m curious what’s happening with sales of poetry, if you have any insight into if this is actually a growing, you know, area for books and collections.

India Lena González: Yeah, that’s a great question. I wish I had an answer for you. From my perspective, it seems that like poetry, just in terms of like when I’m collecting data every year for debut poets, it really is a booming business. It has not died down at all. I felt differently about other genres as I’m collecting data throughout the years where numbers change and things like that. But I think that because a lot of poets go through these smaller presses and there’s so many of them, I know that a lot are shutting down because of NEA grants and all the stuff like that, for sure. But I have found that the numbers of poetry collections, they’re still there. People are still reading it. And I still think that maybe because it is such a free form and such an authentic form for self-expression, and given the time period that we’re living in now, I think it’s maybe speaking to people in a way that perhaps it wasn’t before where we maybe took it for granted. So I’m personally always super excited by poetry and what’s out there. And I feel there is no shortage of poets. I feel that everyone’s still coming up and growing and blossoming on their own time, which is nice to see.

Nikki: Yeah, I have a suspicion that as our attention spans shorten that it’s like our attention span is now landing on the form of poetry, which just makes me happy. So, yeah.

India Lena González: Yeah, I love to hear that. I always feel like sometimes people are turned off because of the abstract quality of it. And people don’t seem to want to think deeply anymore these days. They like that kind of like TikTok video and then move on. So I think maybe form is a way in for people to enjoy poetry, the shortness of it. And then you can like work through the difficulty of how layered it is in that way as well.

Panio Gianopoulos: I think people are often intimidated by poetry in the sense of they feel overwhelmed. I have friends who will say like, oh yeah, I don’t know who to read. Like all they’ve done is like read Robert Frost in high school. Right. And then I’ll say, oh, you should read, you know, I usually like the, for me, the gateway drug for poetry is I usually give them Mary Oliver. I feel like she is like, you get her and then people like, wow, she’s amazing. And then you’re like, okay, well, here’s, here’s a little bit of this. Here’s, you know, um, Then you can sort of sneak it in. Or Neruda. Neruda’s a great one. You can get people in Neruda. And sometimes Rilke, if you have a more like philosophical, spiritual friend. And Rumi, I think those are kind of reliable, soft entries. And then you can start throwing the more interesting stuff at that. Not more interesting. I mean, they’re all legends for a reason.

Audience member: I would add Billy Collins to your list. I think he’s accessible.

Panio Gianopoulos: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. I would say Charles Simic I was really into for a while. And then I kind of burned out. But... But yeah, he’s got some really good stuff. The funny thing about poetry, though, is the short attention span idea, which you mentioned, I hope that’s true. I feel like every decade somebody’s like, hey, everyone’s attention span is shrinking. Now short story collections are going to be great. And as a short story writer, I’m like, yeah, and then they don’t. They don’t sell. And I was like, what the hell, guys? You can’t even pay attention. Read a short story. And I don’t know what it is about short stories, but maybe poetry’s got a shot because it’s just so short. You’re not even committing 20 minutes. You’re committing like 45 seconds to a poem. I love poetry, so I hope so. I hope that’s true. I also love short story collections, so I’m always waiting for them, you know, I think maybe because it’s like the different world building. I think sometimes like a novel because you just stay in one world and then you’re kind of on autopilot. You don’t have to relearn the world, which is why poetry and short story collections is hard for some people because every page you have to relearn something new. You can’t take it for granted. And so I love a short story collection and I wish that we lived in a world where they were championed as much as novels because I think there’s something so delicious about that short form and you dip in and then you dip out and you can build a whole world but focus on different characters or different angles. I think there’s so much liberty and freedom that you don’t get in a novel. You have to stick with something. From a poetry background, I don’t want to stick with anything. I want to keep moving. So I’m always like, you know, anytime you can shift gears, it also shows writers or readers out there what more you can do outside of that one vein, which is cool. Right. And short stories, you can experiment as a writer in a way that you don’t always want to as a novelist because something can work for 14 pages. It’s not going to work for 300 pages. Like that book, Joshua Ferris, was a big bestseller called Then We Came to the End. It’s like 20 years ago. Super interesting, super fun. But I tapped out after like 150 pages. Like I got it. First-person plural. You know, it was smart, and it was relentless and it was supposed to be, but I just thought this would be an amazing short story. I don’t really need to read the whole book. Obviously, you know, hundreds of thousands of people did. So props to Josh, but I think, you know, short stories, you can just take a chance. You can do something totally weird and abstract for eight pages. You can have it be, you know, text exchanges. You can have it be, you know, mixed media. But as an author, I don’t know that I want to commit two years to something highly experimental or three years. I wrote this novel that’s told from like an aquarium’s point of view of a bunch of fish. But like, good luck selling that. But you know, you write like a weird, quirky story in eight pages and you can make it work. So on the writer’s side, I’m always championing short stories.

India Lena González: For sure, yeah. I love the risk-taking. I think what wins ultimately in terms of numbers and sales is always the books that are more commercially successful, the ones that are written in a more traditional vein that anyone can dip into and out of without having to put any pressure on the reader to really decipher anything. And that totally is what it is. And there is an audience for that. And I respect that. And, you know, I work with that. But I think I’m, you know, ultimately what stands the test of time for me are the people that are more on the outside, the people that aren’t really in it to make that high amount of money, but are really in it to tell a story in the most authentic way possible. And for me personally, as an editor, that is what excites me when I see someone being true to who they are without, you know, buying into there’s one way to write a book. and that there’s one successful way to do it. Like, I want to see you really write a story in a way that your parents told you stories as a kid. Because I think that’s also like, it’s cultural, it’s different. We all grow up talking differently in our households. And so when you hear your grandparents tell a story, then that kind of rhythm of it or what you focus on in the story is different. And I wish that writing programs didn’t always beat that individuality out of people, but we were able to maintain and accept and respect each other’s differences in terms of how we come to storytelling. And when I see someone commit to storytelling that’s true to them or their people, that for me is a huge win because it definitely takes courage to do that. We know that. I think that’s where you learn the most as a reader is when people with different backgrounds and different stories come. And they say, look, this is how I tell a story. Listen to the way that I use language. And again, it’s that poetry background for me. How do you use language? There’s currency in that. And if you’re just using it really flatly in the way that everyone does, that doesn’t pop for me as a reader. But if you’re really working with language and you’re pulling or you’re pushing it and you’re doing things and you’re putting pressure on each word, even with prose, which I know is a lot harder because there’s so much content to deal with. At least find your particular way of writing. Then your voice shines and then I can’t forget you. So then just in terms of also like cutting through the noise, if you make yourself unforgettable in that way, and I really feel your fingerprint on the page, then it will linger with me regardless of whether or not I personally like it. That’s probably a book that will still get chosen because objectively it has something different to offer. And I’m always looking for different, not same old, same old.

Panio Gianopoulos: Well, that’s a wonderful argument against AI-assisted text. I did want to ask you, do you run into that where you think like this is AI-generated or this is probably, I mean, I guess at the point that you’re looking at things are already finished and published, so maybe not. But I am curious about that because the idea behind, you know, AI is it picks words statistically, I was just talking to a friend about it, who worked at Google, and he’s like, yeah, AI picks the statistically most likely next word. So every single time it’s familiar. Which is the most boring kind of writing. ‘Oh, great, another version of a thing I’ve read a thousand times.’

So that gives me hope. AI just takes away all the magic out of things. It’s like a super literal boring friend with no sense of humor... I really don’t get it. And I don’t understand when people generate AI stories and then they submit them in contests. Just on the principle of pride. What are you submitting? You didn’t write it. It’s like hiring someone to run a race for you. And you’re like, look, I got it. Well, you didn’t. You didn’t run it.

India Lena González: Yeah, I’m in total agreement. You know, very anti-AI. I think as we’re talking about creative writing, I just don’t understand the use of it within creative writing. The whole point is to have the individual first and foremost lead us through something. So relying on something that’s not human to be the engine for that. It feels very counterintuitive to me, like you said, because I’m at the later stage of like receiving a book that’s already been vetted or gone through a long process. I don’t encounter any like, oh, that seems like it’s written by AI. But when we are working with authors to write essays for us, that’s definitely a clause we have in the contract that can’t have any AI assistance. And that’s also something that we are checking for and you’re reading for to see like, does this sentence construction seem like it’s written by an individual or does it seem a little more general and things of that sort. But we also know that like even the process of checking AI using all these different resources, it’s not really up to snuff. One site might say, yes, AI was used for that. Another site might say no. So at the end of the day, you also kind of have to take the author at their word if you do choose to be like, okay, why lie about something like that or why even utilize something like that in this field and in this industry? It feels morally wrong to me, but that’s just my personal point of view.

Panio Gianopoulos: Stacey, you’ve been sitting on a question for a while.

Stacey: Oh, thank you. I have a question that’s both selfish and broader. So selfishly, I’m thinking, oh, my book’s coming out on October 20th. I have to check and see if my publicist pitched you. So I have to do that. But then all of a sudden, I got nervous and I thought, oh my gosh, what if it’s too late? And I think that nervousness speaks to a broader thing that I’ve been feeling about the publishing industry is that there’s so much emphasis on the pub date or the debut author. I just feel like that’s a little unfair. So I love that, like, for example, that you’re looking at people over 50, because I’m over 50, but, you know, and I feel like poets and writers are taking a longer view of things. I don’t know, maybe that’s just the impression I got from you, but I just, if you could just speak to that, like, that rush, like everything has to be around pub date. Everything has to be around like your first time coming out. And it puts a lot of pressure. And it also feels like unreasonable since like the best, the books that make publishers money are the backlist books, not the frontlist. So yeah, so those are all my questions. Thank you.

India Lena González: Well, firstly, congratulations on the book coming out in October. I love that. And please be sure that your publicist pitched us.

Stacey: I will do that.

India Lena González: Yeah. Yeah, you know, so it’s hard. So it’s different when we’re dealing with like the print magazine versus our online content. We have a lot more leeway for online just in terms of like, you know, being honest. So for print, we’re looking for that time peg of like whatever the issue is, making sure that the pub date for that book is around the same time. And then, of course, we also do shed light on authors who are not just debut authors, but we have those series to continue to shed light on writers. I think there’s a lot of importance placed on the idea that, for your debut, you really have to get everything in when you can, and it has to be all this, you know, and all that prep that goes into it, and there’s so much you don’t know as an author. You know how to write a book, but no one tells you about the business side of it and how it works. And so for instance, like for print, you need like a six month lead time before we know about a book in order for it to be in that issue. Because right now we’re working on January/February, just to show you how far in advance. I think sometimes authors don’t know that intuitively. Some publicists do. The good ones do. But sometimes they also will pitch and be like, oh, this book is coming out next week. What do you think? Let’s do an interview. And you’re like, it’s coming out next week. That’s not going to work for print, right? I think it’s our online series where there is not always a time peg on that. So if we just really love the book and we’re like, how can we still shed light on it? There are so many other avenues that we can give an author to share their experience. It just wouldn’t look the same as it would in print necessarily. That’s the beauty of online is that like you can pick up a book at any time and say, hey, I love it. And so for me personally, I work on our writer’s recommend series, which is a really sweet series. It’s like every two weeks we have a writer that’s in any genre and they just write about like a recommendation for how to get back into writing if you have writer’s block or how to turn away from writing to give yourself a break. And it’s like really short essays that I think are just like really good. Little meals to eat if you’re reading it to be like, oh, this person does wood carving or this person takes long walks and then thinks through their book while they’re doing that. Like there’s all these different, I’ve read like so many different writers’ versions of like what to do or what to do away from writing that is really helpful. And for that, there’s zero time peg. So it could literally even be a book that’s now coming out in paperback. And if I’m like, hey, we didn’t do it in hardcover, but I really love it now, we can do that. And I love that freedom of it. And then also like, There are also opportunities in our magazine, because we’re not just promoting the writers, but we’re also doing essays and they’re writing content for us that doesn’t even have to do with the books, but just around ideas of like what it means to be in the literary world and what you come up against. If you ever have an idea for an essay that you want to pitch that’s somewhat related to the book, but also just like general knowledge for other readers to keep in mind or something that people have always been wondering, but no one really taps into. We have that avenue for writers as well to be able to like share your story and then still get your book in your byline in there without it having to be so time pegged. So there are different ways for us in particular, but I do wish in general that debut writers didn’t feel all that anxiety of like, if I don’t get all the publicity now, then it will never happen because I know that like, you can also like, in my personal experience with my own publishing journey, like three years after my book came out, that’s when I got the biggest publicity for it. And it wasn’t anyone pushing it. It was just the book starts falling on people’s laps magically and then start reading. And then, from there, people respond. So I also want to say: don’t worry about like right now, right now, like it doesn’t have to be this fall. I think some of the best things that can and will happen for you might happen like many months or even years down the line and you won’t even see it happening. But I think it’s just the way that it works is like once the book is out there, it takes people time to read it. And then once they do, they can still make decisions and they can still invite you into certain conversations. So don’t, it’s easy for me to say, but don’t worry about it.

Stacey: Thank you so much. That’s really great and helpful advice. Thank you.

Panio Gianopoulos: Nikki, what’s your question?

Nikki: Yeah, you said you’ve been doing this role for seven years. And I was curious what trends you see. There’s so much changing. I’m curious what’s different now than it was seven years ago. And related to that, what trends do you see now happening that make you hopeful or excited?

India Lena González: Yeah. I think some of the trends that I’ve really seen this year, just in terms of like prose, fiction and nonfiction, I’ve seen less diversity in terms of the writers that are putting books out there. And that’s been obviously disheartening. I understand the environment that we’re living in and how that comes to be. But I’ve definitely seen that shift over even the last two to three years, far less diversity. Certain kinds of books are getting pushed for a timeliness for certain people in terms of certain topics and things of that sort that maybe weren’t being pushed before. And then others are getting pushed to the side. So that I’ve been noticing and that I’ve been kind of deeply saddened by. But then I think on the positive side, Going back to poetry, I think seeing the diversity poetry offers—and that it hasn’t stopped—may be because poetry is generally less driven by capitalism. No one’s in it for the money. So everyone’s really in it to just tell their story. I hope that continues to live and then maybe I’m not in the publishing houses. I’m not in the room when they’re making decisions on what to pick and what not to pick. But I definitely have noticed that certain stories are getting told. And there’s like a lot of things that are being told. I think there’s a lot of similar stories out there. Whereas before I felt that there were very different topics that one could choose from. And now it seems like we’re really capitalizing on certain experiences over others that we think will be more sellable. I’ll be honest about that because I’ve spoken at length about that to people that will listen to because it really is quite sad to just see how everything starts to become a monolith. Everything is the same, the same, the same. And so I do miss the options that we used to have. And now I have to really search to have options.

Panio Gianopoulos: This is sort of tangentially related, but I often hear claims like no one’s reading anymore. But how do you respond to that? Do you ever hear that?

India Lena González: Yeah, I think a lot of people are reading. I mean, because we’re really in service of like writers and readers. And when I think of our audience, I think of people who are going to want to read the books that we are promoting. I know that I read a whole lot, not just for work, and so do the people I speak with. There’s a lot of reading going on. I think that when you write, you read a lot naturally because that’s what helps feed you as well. But then I do think that when I take the subway to work in New York, a lot of people are reading books. A lot of people are reading books, whether it’s on a Kindle or it’s like a physical book. I’ve been really heartened by that because I don’t think that I saw it that much before, but all of a sudden it seems like more people are reading. Whether it’s escapism and people want to get out of this world into a different one, whatever it is, I know that romance does really well, for example, I think that is complete escapism, but there’s something in books that’s offering people, I think some people want to think deeper about the world that we’re in and understand how we got to where we’re at. I think some people want to leave it. My hope is that this will continue and that we don’t forget about this and make everything digital and then stop reading altogether. But yeah.

Panio Gianopoulos: I do see even the next generation of kids who are 17 and my daughter’s a big reader and she deliberately, when she goes to work as a babysitter, she deliberately turns her phone off or silences and brings her Kindle. The kid’s playing soccer or whatever. And she’ll read her Kindle because she doesn’t want to doomscroll. She doesn’t. And she’s not alone. I do see people her age fighting against this addiction, this screen addiction. And reading is one solution to it. It’s something I do too. I think, okay, I’ll just put Instagram away and I’ll just go back to this book I’m reading. So it’s very easy to think, oh, it’s just, you know, reading is going to be consumed by scrolling. But scrolling is ultimately junk food. It’s not satisfying in the same way that reading is. And we hit that. I think a lot of people find that out.

India Lena González: Yeah. This need to unplug is also a trend I’ve been seeing. Even younger generations—people who are teenagers or in their early twenties—want to unplug entirely. People are like, I’m just putting my phone away and I’m not responding to emails. I’m not even looking at them, which I didn’t know that was a thing. I feel that personally. So I’m always like the least amount of screen time, the better. But I’m really seeing that like people are responding, I think, strongly to like AI and just all these technological advances, people are like now on the opposite side being like, I just want to go outside and read a book. And we’re like, we’ve always been here. So it’s great to have you back. But that’s a nice thing that like younger generations are being like, you know what? Actually, I don’t really want to doom scroll. TikTok isn’t really for me. I do want to do something that will feed me because like you said, ultimately it is just junk food. And I don’t think that you get the best feeling after social media is what I’ve heard and what I felt. Sometimes it does the exact opposite. So if you really want to do something that feeds you properly, then I think that literature is a great antidote to that. That’s the medicine.

Panio Gianopoulos: Absolutely. All right. One last question and Nikki’s got a great one. She said, “Do you have one single book recommendation for us? Something you recently loved?”

India Lena González: I’m in the process of reading—this is a poetry recommendation—Aracelis Girmay’s latest book, green of all heads. Yeah, I’m in the process of reading that and blown away by it. Absolutely blown away by it. Yeah. It’s super authentic, just in terms of everything you’ve been talking about of like language that is authentic to the writer. It has a wonderful interiority to it that sometimes you can fully understand and sometimes you can’t. It makes you want to go back and read it again. And so there’s something to it that I find really, really moving and deeply sincere. I don’t know that I felt that kind of level of sincerity from someone in a long time when I’ve read a book where it just feels like an absolute uncovering of self without any performance to look good in front of someone. Yeah.

Panio Gianopoulos: Oh, that sounds amazing. All right. I’m checking it out. India, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your insights and your optimism. I would say that’s really lovely to hear, like sort of fighting the good fight out there.

India Lena González: Absolutely. That’s what I’m here for. Thank you so much for having me.

Cassandra Vieten studies something all of us use constantly but rarely stop to examine: imagination. A clinical psychologist and director of research at UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, she investigates how imagination shapes the way we think, feel, create, and change.

Her new book, Imagine That, brings that original research into everyday life. Vieten argues that imagination isn’t a special faculty reserved for artists or dreamers, but a fundamental human capacity, and one we can learn to use more deliberately.

21 Questions with Cassandra Vieten

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My body doubling Zoom support on Caveday—people get together online for one or three hour sessions to complete tasks together whether writing, doing their taxes, cleaning their house. Not sure why it works, but it does for me!

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

I always think it’s going to be me, writing away, with a cup of tea and sun shining in the windows. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s me without a shower in pajamas at night slowly pounding away on my keyboard.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Definitely running errands. I’ll start as soon as I go out and get a backup tube of toothpaste!

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes, with one eye open and my head turned to the side, just in case.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Watch a silly movie or read a silly novel.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I want to know that someone else is writing too, at the same time.

7. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Everywhere! And I either write them or record them into my phone. Now remembering to get them back out of the phone, that’s another thing.

8. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Do your own original work, and no one can ever take that from you.

9. And the worst?

Lean in. In other words, just keep doing more.

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

I had a teacher once who did not take meetings before noon. She worked from noon to six and had an incredible impact on so many people. In part because of how she showed up, because she spent every morning becoming that person.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin.

12. How did you find your agent?

A colleague I love recommended me (thank you!)

13. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

I often start sentences with “And” or “But” and it works for me!

14. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I use AI to ask me clarifying questions. I ignore bibliographic software (but often to my detriment).

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Meditation.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

So many. So, so many.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Wake up, move my body, breakfast, slow start, and then power time from about 11 am – 4 pm.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Hahahaha. Ha.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Science fiction!

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

The randomness with which an inspired streak can hit. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.

21. What is your new book about?

The crucial importance of imagination in our everyday lives, and how to find it, and use it more frequently and skillfully

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Cassandra’s book here: Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few recent posts:

Until next time,
Panio

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India oversees the magazine’s New Nonfiction feature, an annual look at outstanding debut memoirs, essay collections, and hybrid nonfiction. We’ll discuss what catches her attention, how emerging writers can get noticed by literary publications, and what the magazine’s “5 Over 50” series reveals about breaking through later in life.

The event was originally planned for paid members, but I’ve decided to open it to all Author Insider subscribers. You’ll have the chance to ask India your own questions, so bring good ones!

Wednesday, September 16
1:00 p.m. ET
Live on Google Meet

Register here

I look forward to seeing you there!

Best,
Panio

Caroline Webb has built her career around understanding how people think and perform at their best. An economist, leadership coach, and former McKinsey partner, she is the bestselling author of How to Have a Good Day, which translated insights from behavioral science into practical tools for making work—and life—better.

Her new book, Leadership Intelligence, turns that lens on what it takes to lead well now, whether you’re running a team or simply trying to make better decisions, give useful feedback, and work effectively with other people. As AI becomes more advanced, Webb argues that human intelligence matters more, not less. Drawing on behavioral and cognitive science and decades of advising leaders, she offers practical strategies for 21 common workplace challenges.

21 Questions with Caroline Webb

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

The many thousands of scientists who did the primary research underpinning each piece of advice I give readers. I had room to cite 300 or so papers directly, but I read easily over a thousand in the process of writing the book. I am in awe of the painstaking work that researchers do, as they go deeper and deeper into understanding the human mind and body.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

One is that there is such a thing as a “book tour.” My friends have given up asking me when I am going “on tour” — they know by now that you never stop talking about a book, if you’re lucky. You keep going, everywhere, all the time, for as long as anyone will have you.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Online thrift shopping.

4. Do you read your reviews?

It’s hard not to, because it’s so wonderful to read how your work has helped your readers. In my genre of prescriptive non-fiction, you really want to know that your work has made people’s lives better in some way. But I do it less and less on sites with a known troll problem, because you only have to see one weirdly horrible review to feel bad in ten different ways.

If you’re lucky enough to have a colleague who can read reviews for you, that’s potentially a good middle ground—they can share with you what’s most uplifting and share what’s useful in the rest. That’s what I’m going to do this time around.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I never really feel like a draft is “finished.” It’s always a work in progress, plus my day job continues to flow around it. But I try to treat myself to an easy couple of days after sending a draft to my editor, and maybe one (1) martini.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

A little bit of kiss, marry, kill to all three. On balance, I’m really happy that they’re all in my life.

I usually love podcasts because I relish a great conversation, and some hosts are so good that I end up having new thoughts as we’re talking. Some hosts unintentionally make you work really hard through sheer disorganization.

Newsletters make me feel very connected to my network. I always open with a personal story, so I also get to make something useful out of every difficult situation I’ve ever experienced in my life, which is like highly cost-efficient therapy. That said, they take a lot of work, and you don’t get a lot of feedback.

And speaking allows me to dive into a wide range of industries, at least for a short while, and I always find that really fascinating. But you never know how good the hotel room is going to be... so I travel with bulldog clips to close the curtains, and yes, I do jam my own tiny pillow into my carry-on when I can.

7. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

Emailing a draft to myself at the end of each day, even though it’s already backed up in a couple of other ways. It’s actually as much a close-out ritual—I can switch off after I’ve done it.

8. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Saying yes to connection requests on LinkedIn. I didn’t realize authors were supposed to do that!

9. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

My coaching sessions always sharpen my sense of what people really need from me as a writer on leadership and professional effectiveness, and I take close notes on a digital tablet (or on my phone if I’m on the run). I kept coaching clients all the way through my work on Leadership Intelligence, and although that wasn’t always easy to juggle, it was the right thing to do. My coaching made the writing better—and the writing made the coaching better, too, because it helped me get ever crisper on how to communicate the right approach to common management situations.

10. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a sunrise wake-up lamp, and a bottle of water. We won’t talk about the mess around those.

11. How did you find your agent?

By asking all my fanciest non-fiction author friends who their favorite agent was. Jim Levine’s name came up again and again.

12. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

I always end up in a tussle with copy-editors about using digits for timings, rather than spelling them out in words (“block time for 25 minutes” versus “block time for twenty-five minutes”). When busy business readers are scanning for advice, I want them to be able to quickly see what they’re supposed to do.

13. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I use the Freedom platform to block my access to websites and apps when I need to focus. I am not on retainer, although maybe I should let them know that I am a fan!

I’m happy to use ChatGPT or Claude to shorten a piece of text or check my syntax. I never let AI tools write for me because, for me, writing is thinking. Writing prose, taking handwritten notes, diagramming concepts—these are key cognitive techniques that allow me to synthesize vast quantities of scientific research. When someone sends me something that’s been written by AI, it’s usually overwrought and overlong, and although the document looks polished on the surface, the arguments are all too often quite muddled once you really poke them.

14. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Producers tell me that my singing experience has given me decent breath control when recording my audiobooks. I think it’s as much that as I know about the existence of Throat Coat tea, which many singers use before concerts.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

As many as I can write before I hit the deadline I agreed to with the editor. I find deadlines a good forcing mechanism.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I’m a late-night person. So I like a gentle start to the day, with coffee made by my lovely husband, then a walk outdoors (or an inexpert run on the treadmill) while listening to a podcast. Even better if I get to do that walk with a friend or colleague. Formal meetings happen from 11 am onward, and I see clients ideally in the afternoon. My peak writing time is 4 - 8 pm and I typically work until about 8.30 pm. When I need extra time, it’s much smarter for me to work until 11 pm than to get up early. Since this is a version of the Proust questionnaire, I will mention that Proust was even more nocturnal than I am, though left to myself, my body clock easily drifts toward his kind of routine.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Pretty close! I advise people to be proactive about scheduling their time intentionally, so I do have to walk my own talk on this. Sometimes I start meetings earlier, obviously, for example, with the UK and the rest of Europe. But since my twenties, I have found that it’s fine to be clear about my preferences, so long as I’m flexible and keep delivering good work.

18. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

A memoir about being a late-night person, maybe. I apparently have a lot to say about it.

19. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

You think you’re done. But you’re not done. You’re never done.

20. Fill in the blank: In five years, successful authors will be…

Highly intentional about showing that their thinking is fundamentally their own.

21. What is your new book about?

It’s a leadership playbook that helps readers make the most of the human intelligence on their team, across 21 common management situations. I wrote it for leaders of all types, whether they’re formally managing people in a company or just trying to marshal a book group.

It’s got a strong backbone of behavioral and cognitive science, but I designed it to be very practical and easy to use when you have only six minutes to gather yourself before a meeting or a deadline. I hope it helps a lot of people who are trying to get good things done with their teams.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Caroline’s book here: Leadership Intelligence: Science-Backed Strategies for Mastering 21 Everyday Management Challenges.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• 8 Questions to Ask Before You Sign With a Literary Agent

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time (21 Questions)

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

But wait… what about the slush pile? Tom Clancy’s novel, The Hunt for Red October, was famously plucked out of the slush pile at the Naval Institute Press! Mm, not so much. Tom Clancy contacted the press first, and they invited him to submit his novel directly (even though they had never published fiction before).

So yes, you will almost certainly need an agent. And that brings us to the much less-discussed part of the process: what to do when an agent is interested in you.

At that point, everything changes. You’re no longer emailing agent after agent in a near-endless attempt to get someone to notice you. Suddenly, you’re desirable. And now you have a different question to answer: Do you actually want this person representing your work and, ideally, your career?

The problem is that most writers have spent so long trying to get an agent that they haven’t given much thought to interviewing one. So I asked literary agent Lucinda Halpern, author of Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author, what she thinks writers should be asking when the tables finally turn.

Below are the eight questions she recommends asking a prospective agent.

– Panio Gianopoulos

When an author has the opportunity to speak with an interested agent, many make the mistake of speaking exclusively about their book. It’s natural. But if an agent is considering representing you, this is your opportunity to vet the partnership and determine how thoughtfully they have considered your work—and how this vital relationship will proceed once the initial excitement wears off.

Here are the eight questions I suggest every writer ask a prospective agent:

1. What specifically do you think the project still needs?
   You want evidence that the agent has read closely, researched you, and has a vision beyond “This is great—I can sell it.”

2. How much development would you anticipate, and what would that timeline look like?
   Be wary of both extremes. One week may suggest insufficient thought; several months may suggest a crowded list and a project that will not be prioritized. The person most enthusiastic about you will clear their plate to make the time.

3. What books have you represented that offer relevant experience for mine?
   They need not be identical books, but the agent should be able to thoughtfully explain the parallels if not.

4. Who do you see as the reader, and what kinds of publishers would you approach?
   Listen for specificity. An agent with relationships will have several names at the tip of the tongue.

5. What other commercial opportunities do you see? Are there any rights you would specifically look to protect in a contract?
   A sophisticated agent will be thinking beyond the initial book toward audio, foreign rights, film and television, speaking, brand partnerships—the author’s larger career.

6. What makes a client relationship successful for you—and what tends to make one difficult?
   This will tell you more about expectations, communication, and compatibility than simply asking, “What does the process look like?”

7. Who will be my primary contact?
   Will you work directly with the agent, an associate, or a larger team? None of these models is inherently wrong, but you should understand the relationship you are entering.

8. What happens if the book doesn’t sell immediately?
   Ask how long the agent typically advocates for a project, how the submission strategy might change, and perhaps ask for examples of when the agent either sold to a smaller or alternative press (and why). The agent you want is one who will hustle—and go the distance.

   ---

Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent and the CEO of Lucinda Literary, based in New York. Her classes and coaching programs have been taught to hundreds of writers worldwide, and became the inspiration for her book Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author (Hay House; February 6th, 2024). Learn more at lucindaliterary.com, follow Lucinda Halpern on LinkedIn, or take the quiz: "Are You Ready for a Book Deal?"

Sasha Hamdani, a psychiatrist specializing in ADHD and emotional regulation, has built an audience of more than two million followers across Instagram and TikTok as @thepsychdoctormd by making mental health accessible and engaging. Which is a refreshing change from the people who go viral for eating 10,000 calories in one sitting, doing The Griddy, or cosplaying (though I kinda have a soft spot for Chewbacca Mom. Who hasn’t wanted to wookie out in a Target parking lot?)

Her new book brings that same smart, accessible, and entertaining approach to a subject that is often misunderstood: sensitivity. Too Sensitive explores the science of emotional sensitivity and rejection-sensitive dysphoria, i.e., why some of us experience rejection, criticism, or even subtle shifts in tone so intensely. Hamdani argues that once we understand what’s happening in our brain (and nervous system), we can learn to respond differently, as well as recognize the strengths that come with feeling deeply. As someone who burst into tears at my fifth birthday party because I couldn’t pin the tail on the donkey, I wholeheartedly endorse this sentiment.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Hamdani talks about being vulnerable on the page, why she works in intense bursts, and the little things that help make writing possible.

21 Questions with Dr. Sasha Hamdani

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My patients. So much of what I write starts with hearing someone describe something they’ve carried for years and realizing, “Wait, THAT HAS A NAME??”

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That you need to feel inspired to write. Most of writing is sitting down when you have absolutely nothing profound to say and trusting that eventually something useful will come out.

3. Do you read your reviews?

Yes, which is probably a bad idea for someone who just wrote an entire book about rejection sensitivity.

4. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Close my laptop and try not to look at it for a few days. I need enough distance to forget how brilliant or terrible I thought it was while writing it.

5. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Kiss speaking gigs, marry podcasts, kill newsletters. I love my newsletter, but every week it somehow feels like the deadline arrives three days earlier than it should.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I need the right environment. Always have my big fuzzy cardigan (outside temperature does not matter), a crispy Coke Zero to drink, everything arranged correctly in terms of where my laptop is in relation to my snacks (which vary but are usually either nuts or something else crunchy). Apparently my brain thinks writing requires a small ceremony.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Long-form writing. Social media taught me how to communicate an idea quickly, but writing books taught me how much I love having room to actually explore one.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Mostly conversations, patients, comments, and things I notice in my own life. I keep a completely chaotic Notes app that makes sense to absolutely no one except me.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t wait until you feel ready. Most of the best things in my career happened because I said yes before I had completely figured out how I was going to do them.

10. And the worst?

Stay in your lane. Almost everything interesting I’ve done professionally has happened because I didn’t.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

I’ve always admired Atul Gawande’s career. He’s a physician who has managed to be a clinician, writer, researcher, and public thinker, and he uses storytelling to make complicated questions about medicine and human behavior feel deeply personal.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

An embarrassing number of half-read physical books, my Kindle, water, red light mask, and a picture of a treasure map that my son drew.

13. How did you find your agent?

THIS IS MY FAVORITE STORY. My neighbor is an incredible author (Robert Miner!) and when he moved in I told him how I was discouraged from writing another book. He told me his agent asked about me and set up a meeting between us. I met her once and knew that I needed her to be my agent because that would ensure that I would get a chance to be her friend. She’s the coolest.

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

That you have to write every day. I absolutely do not. I tend to write intensely in bursts, which is probably the most ADHD way possible to write a book.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Being a psychiatrist (is that a skill?). My entire job is listening closely, finding patterns, and taking something complicated and making it understandable. That’s basically writing.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

I show my editor my first draft because I have zero filter and I’m usually really excited. That being said, it usually takes upwards of 15 rewrites for it to be usable.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

A quiet morning, nowhere to be, seeing a few patients (with enough time to chat!), gym with my husband, a few uninterrupted hours to write or to create educational content online, and then school pick up!

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

My day never looks like that. I don’t even know what a quiet morning looks like. Especially over Summer.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Fiction. I would love to write a novel where I could explore psychology and grief without having to explain the lesson at the end of every chapter. I just want people to feel their way through.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How vulnerable it feels. You can spend years writing something privately, and then one day strangers are allowed to have opinions about it (again, it’s my own fault for writing about rejection)

21. What is your new book about?

Too Sensitive is for people who feel things too quickly, too deeply, and for too long. It looks at the neuroscience of emotional sensitivity and rejection-sensitive dysphoria, especially in ADHD, and gives people practical tools to understand their patterns, regulate their emotions, and stop treating sensitivity like a personal failure.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Sasha’s book here: Too Sensitive: Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

While I have some strong opinions about AI and writing (I plan to write that essay soon), today, I thought I’d share someone else’s thoughts on the matter. Yes, a guest post! I don’t run them often, but recently I was emailing with Natalie Nixon, author of The Creativity Leap, and I was intrigued by her perspective. So without further ado, here’s Natalie.

At the 2025 Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, CEO Shantanu Narayen made a declaration that is near and dear to my heart: “Creativity is the new productivity!” I loved that pronouncement. That’s partly because it resonated with what was consuming my attention as I prepared to launch my 2025 book, Move. Think. Rest., a fresh and human-centered take on productivity. But I also loved Narayen’s perspective because the notion that creativity is the means to our best productivity serves as a bridge to my newest work, the second edition of my very first book, The Creativity Leap.

In the new Chapter 10, “Algorithms & Awe,” I make the case that if we want AI technology to amplify what makes us uniquely human, then we must take agency to ensure that a dystopian future does not “just happen to us.” To counter that potential outcome, we must consistently ask questions of the technology to ensure ethical and meaningful outcomes.

Increasingly, our productivity feels like it’s gaining a boost from AI. However, that promise of greater efficiency can lead us into the trap of working like an AI-Human-AI sandwich. That is to say, we start with the AI and end with the AI while the human dimension (for example, our curiosity, intuition, and improvisational inclinations) becomes an afterthought.

Instead, we’d be better off working like Human-AI-Human sandwiches, where the AI can help us build on our initial human conception, and then we take the baton to further develop ideas and answers through in-person conversations, collaborations, critical thinking, and pondering.

The foundational principle of The Creativity Leap is that creativity is your ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems, deliver novel value and discern meaning. Creativity is not a nice-to-have; it’s a critical requirement and strategic capability in a world of burnout, tech FOMO, and morphing rules for work. I make the case that fortifying our minds with awe, wonder, and human consciousness will be increasingly crucial alongside the rigorous critical thinking and experimentation that ultimately amplifies what makes us uniquely human.

Here are five questions I propose we consistently ask in order to build creativity as a strategic capability alongside AI.

1. “But, why…?” Pausing to ask this question is ideal before electing to automate, for example, a workflow. This question requires us to pause and question whether the tech makes sense situationally and contextually. We are often seduced by speed. But if a computerized tool is applied incorrectly, then haven’t we ultimately wasted time?

2. “Is this tool sharpening my thinking, or replacing it?” These days, not only do we need to be concerned with AI slop, but also with brainrot. This sounds harsh, but if we do not exercise critical thinking, mind wandering, and curiosity, well, we stand to lose those tools of human intelligence.

3. “How can AI help people flourish?” Burnout rates are pretty staggering. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, it’s estimated that 71 percent of US workers have experienced burnout. This amounts to a $300 billion cost to businesses (according to the American Institute of Stress) due to resulting absenteeism, turnover, and higher insurance rates. If we fill the saved time with more work, instead of time for creative activity such as problem solving, reframing questions, prototyping, reflection, and daydreaming (yes, daydreaming!), then we will die a slow death at work.

4. “What if…?” This question helps us to use AI as a springboard. And it nicely encapsulates the WonderRigor™ dynamic where wonder is the catalyst and spark to imagine audaciously, and rigor is the tool to help us excavate and go deeper on a particular topic.

5. “At whose expense?” People’s lives, ideas, and experiences make the training data for AI possible. I know this from personal experience as the first edition of The Creativity Leap was included in the class action lawsuit against Anthropic. Ease’s elegance can blind us to the workers and thinkers behind the scenes.

Here’s what we must remember. We are in the midst of a human revolution, not simply a technological one. Algorithms and code are only as good as the questions people pose and probe. What if we are at an inflection point where we can harness technology in ways that amplify what makes us uniquely human? We cannot lose sight of that possibility.

Matt Bloom has spent nearly three decades studying what helps people flourish, particularly those working in demanding helping professions such as medicine, education, and humanitarian work. A psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, his research has drawn on the experiences of more than 10,000 people across 25 countries.

In his newly released book, Lasting Wellbeing, Bloom translates that research into practical ways to cultivate greater tranquility, meaning, and joy. Rather than prescribing a single path, he offers readers a range of evidence-based practices and a framework for figuring out which ones actually work for them.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Bloom reflects on finding his own way as a writer, the pleasures of creative flow, and why sometimes the best thing you can do is go for a walk.

21 Questions with Matt Bloom

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My wife, Kim, and my brother, Steve. They read draft after draft, gave me great feedback, and were enthusiastic throughout the process. I learned that, for me, writing is a communal experience, and I am grateful to have such wonderful people to work with as I write. I’d also add coffee and lots of music. Both were really important during my writing time.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That it’s really hard. At least that’s what the people I know get wrong. It can be tough at times, but when things are flowing, I’m caught up in something bigger than myself. It’s a wonderful experience. I’ve read a lot of books about writing by authors and have learned that I have to find my way of doing it. Fortunately, I have. It took a while, but it was well worth the time trying different approaches.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Reading books “for inspiration.” I tell myself, “one chapter,” and thirty minutes later I’m still reading. I can get lost in great writing.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes, for sure. I have a lot to learn and reviews can be very helpful. Some of them help me see where I can improve (ouch!). And some are really encouraging.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Crank rock music. Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” U2’s "Where the Streets Have No Name,” and Springsteen’s “Born to Run” are favorites. I listened to those songs when I was in high school, driving around on a warm summer evening. They are still celebrations of life for me.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

Reading my own finished first drafts. I worry that I will be so disappointed I will toss everything. Kim and Steve are my stalwart first draft readers.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Writing books! I thought about it for way too long. My friend and writing coach, Michael McGregor, finally got me going. He told me to write from my head and heart, write what I really cared about. That was the catalyst that finally got me going.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Hiking. There is an ancient motto, solvitur ambulando, a Latin phrase meaning, “It is solved by walking,” and that really works for me. I take a small notepad and pen to write down ideas. It’s all about physical engagement for me, so I avoid digital ways of recording things.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

“Call yourself a writer!” Again, my writing coach Michael McGregor was the source of this advice. He meant I had to claim that I am a writer. Writing is not just something I do; being a writer is something I am. It’s still hard for me to claim this sometimes, but it’s liberating when I do.

10. And the worst?

Write at the same time of day, for the same amount of time every day. That doesn’t work for me. I do need to write almost every day, but staring at a blank page for several hours is depleting. I tend to write in chunks rather than continuously.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

This is a tough one because there are quite a few! I admire Cal Newport and Adam Grant for writing so well for a general audience while also being great scholars. I admire Barbara Brown Taylor for her beautiful nonfiction prose and gracious and generous spirit. And I admire Marilynne Robinson for her wonderful novels and skillful, erudite essays.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Country People by Daniel Mason and my iPad. I always try to fill my head and heart with uplifting things before I sleep, so a really great book and an episode of Ted Lasso or Shrinking are always good choices.

13. How did you find your agent?

I sent proposals to five agents, cold. One told me my book wouldn’t sell, three did not respond. Laurie answered with an enthusiastic email. She is an incredible person and a wonderful agent. I am very fortunate I sent a proposal to her.

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

To write every day and at the same time. I had to figure out what worked for me.

15. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

An online thesaurus and dictionary are key for me. Scrivener is the writing platform I use, and it works great for me. I don’t use AI to write or help me write because I want whatever has my name on it to be from me, even if it’s bad. I tried it once and what was produced was very inauthentic.

16. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Speaking in front of live audiences and leading workshops. I learn so much from the responses, questions, and interactions I have with people during the session and in conversations after it ends. I will accept every speaking invitation I can.

17. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Dozens! One of my worst habits is messing with my writing to the point that I make it worse, so I have had to discipline myself to let my readers tell me when a draft is ready to send. I had a wonderful editorial team at BenBella—Leah Wilson and Clara Tamez were immensely helpful, kind, encouraging—so it was never worrisome to send things to them

18. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Get up by 5 am. Cup of coffee, read poetry and something inspirational. Write for a couple of hours. Work out or go for a hike. Write again for a bit. I also volunteer at local non-profits, so some mornings are occupied with those commitments. Late afternoon, read research or a good book. Then meet Kim for a glass of wine.

19. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Pretty close. Some days I don’t write as much as I hope to, but that’s ok. The writing will flow another day.

20. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Poetry. I love reading poetry, and wish I was able to write good poems. I cannot.

21. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How sometimes something seems to be writing through me. The words are coming into my head; I’m not thinking them myself. It was eerie at first, but I can now accept it. It still thrills me when it happens.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Matt’s book here: Lasting Wellbeing: Science-Based Practices for Tranquility, Authenticity, Meaning, and Joy

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

• The Courage to Look Foolish: 21 Questions with Cate Hall

• How to Talk About Your Book on Camera (Without Hating Yourself)

Until next time,
Panio

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Cate Hall has made a habit of ignoring conventional career advice. Before writing You Can Just Do Things, she left an elite legal career for professional poker, co-founded a biotech startup, and later led one of the world’s largest philanthropic foundations. Her newly released book asks what might happen if more of us stopped waiting for permission.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Cate reflects on Substack, sci-fi, and the surprising value of looking foolish.

21 Questions with Cate Hall

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Substack, and the lovely audience that I’m lucky to have there. The ability to test out ideas in public gave me confidence, helped me refine my thinking, and showed me what wasn’t working. I have so much respect for those who work in a more private fashion, but I need the door open.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

Related to my previous answer: that being a writer is about being an intellectually gifted individual, laboring privately to produce a perfect tome. Maybe it’s like this for some people. But for me, it’s a much more communal process. It’s about striking a balance between personal authenticity and input from the world. Feedback from my husband, editors, and readers is as helpful as my own taste and life experiences.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

I refuse to accept that crosswords are procrastination. I am training my “verbal IQ.”

4. Do you read your reviews?

I don’t have any reviews yet. As you will find out from my book, I’m a big believer in taking feedback. And so, I plan to read my negative reviews and will attempt to see if there’s useful information in there for me. However, my experience on Twitter has also shown me that communicating in public means being vilified for things you never said, based on a projection of yourself that you have nothing to do with. I accept that this may happen with book reviews as well.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I try to take time off from a draft if I can. It’s an agonizing process for me; I want it to be perfect right away, and imperfection bugs me as soon as it exists. And yet, I’ve found that the cliché is true—creative solutions arrive in the shower, or in the car, when you’re mostly thinking about other things.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Marry: newsletters. People who lament the death of written culture clearly aren’t browsing the best of Substack and other blogging platforms; I’m privileged to be a part of this moment.

Kiss: speaking gigs. Though I’m highly averse to public speaking, because I have a conflicted relationship with attention and dislike my voice, working through that aversion has been thrilling.

Kill: podcasts—we all know they’re mostly entertainment masquerading as education. (Although to be clear I enjoy them, and will still do many promotional podcasts for my book.)

7. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I am superstitious that putting effort in is rewarded. I am a merciless and thorough editor of myself, and though I think the best material comes from a place of playful openness, it requires work work work to refine.

8. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Writing in public! The benefits are completely unreasonable, and given that they compound over time, I wish I’d started earlier. By the benefits I mean both the exterior benefits (new friends, good networking) and interior benefits (spiritual satisfaction). It feels wonderful to give yourself away.

9. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Most of my ideas for the book came from wrecking my life a couple of times. I keep track of them from the scars in my memory. I don’t have a formal archival process for ideas. Though I haven’t thought about this before, I think I’m only interested in writing about things that really haunt me. If I have to keep track of it, we’re not hitting the bar.

10. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

If you’re in a position of authority, any feedback you receive on your communication is likely to be true and 10x worse than they say, because they’re being diplomatic. Take it seriously. In general, the greater your responsibilities, the more important it is to get accurate information about how you’re performing, and the less people give it to you. Being a leader has this in common with doing creative work—it’s vital to maintain a personal vision while being absolutely open to input you don’t necessarily want to hear.

11. And the worst?

That I would regret dropping out of big law. I felt relief almost immediately, and I’m so glad that I left just before my salary ballooned to outrageous levels. I have to assume that I’m corruptible by money like anyone else, and so it might’ve been much harder to get out later. I’m so grateful for the wild highs and lows that followed it—my life is a miracle.

12. Whose career do you most admire and why?

My friend Nan Ransohoff, who is working hard for the good of humanity, with a level of ambition that scares even me. Currently, she’s working on an attempt to end viral respiratory infections. It’s funny that this is literally a joke—“What’s next, the cure for the common cold?” She left a very cushy professional career to pursue goals like these, and I expect us all to be better off for it.

13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Waiting for God by Simone Weil, the ravings of a sensitive mystic; Permutation City by Greg Egan, some dark science fiction; and Confidential by John Nolan, a guide to uncovering business secrets. I’d like to think that if you triangulate these titles, this is actually who I am deep down.

14. How did you find your agent?

She reached out cold after reading some of my Substack writing. Thank you, Lisa!

15. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

The use of adverbs. I write clear declarative prose most of the time, because that’s how I talk. But I’m happy to have a sentence end clunkily. Reading someone who is following all the rules feels like hanging out with someone who’s following all the rules. Why so uptight? Who are you trying to impress?

16. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I tried to use AI for research for my book. I’m not opposed to it: we all loathe AI slop, but I think it’s theoretically possible for AI to enhance, not replace, human creativity. I created a detailed prompt explaining what I wanted, and really tried to get good results. But it was much less helpful than old-fashioned research! I think AI can’t currently grasp the rich context of an artistic project, and so it can’t make great judgments about what’s relevant. Having given up on this for now, I don’t use tech tools fancier than a keyboard.

17. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

The ability to tolerate embarrassment and misinterpretation. One way for writing to be weak is defensiveness. My writing used to be like this: hedged to prevent any criticism. That also prevents any enjoyment. Now, I understand that strong writing requires leaving space for misinterpretation, and that people will misinterpret the fuck out of you on the internet.

18. How many drafts before you show your editor?

1–20, depending. I really don’t have a fixed process. Most of what I write, I’m working on with my husband, and he’s always my first editor. I just try to make something he can understand, which is a low bar, given that, like all married couples, we have a lot of collective shorthand.

19. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I like to be right at the edge of exhaustion working on something extremely hard. My favorite is when there’s not a lot of task-switching: I get immense pleasure from being able to dig into something high-stakes, like a fundraising document, for several hours. Then I retire to cuddling my cats and husband.

20. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Science fiction—I think people underestimate the power of fiction to seed the future, and I just love rayguns and antimemes and shit. Someday, I want to create an anthology of utopian sci-fi, because I think we’re undersupplied on good ideas about what a positive technological future could look like. And, from personal experience, people creating transformative technologies are just people, which is to say, inspired by books and movies like anyone else.

21. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How much I can apparently change people’s lives even with writing I feel is just adequate. Writing isn’t my main focus in life, and on a craft level, what I do is highly imperfect. I guess I’ve been lucky to learn some lessons, and I’m happy that I’m a somewhat capable conduit for those lessons.

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You can learn more about Cate’s book here: You Can Just Do Things: How High-Agency People Get What They Want Out of Life

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• How to Get Unstuck and Finish Your Book

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Panio

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Starting a book is easy. The hard part is keeping going. In today’s guest post, book coaches (and authors) Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty explore three of the biggest reasons that writers stall out, and offer proven, practical ways to get moving again.

This piece is excerpted from The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: How to Plan, Write, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book by Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty, published by The Collective Book Studio. I’ve made a few minor edits and added interstitial images.

You can also watch or listen to my Q&A with Marisa and Elizabeth, “Why the Reader Is the Hero of Your Nonfiction Book.”

-Panio Gianopoulos

Writing takes more discipline, effort, and fortitude than most people realize. It can be even harder if you’re less confident in your writing skills. Maybe you struggle with expressing yourself in a language other than your native one, or you still believe you’re a bad writer because a teacher once told you so. For a number of reasons, sustaining your momentum after the initial excitement of getting started can be difficult. It’s all too easy for work to come to a standstill, and for months to go by, despite your best intentions to spend quality time with your keyboard. We understand. Life can get in the way.

In this article, we address the top reasons authors get stuck: procrastination, perfectionism, and impostor syndrome. You’ll add to your arsenal proven strategies—including time management, habit formation, and accountability—to keep your work from stalling and help you bounce back more readily when progress halts.

Common roadblock: procrastination

We’d wager that procrastination is the most common reason books don’t get finished. After all, if you intend to write a book but don’t do it, by definition you’re putting it off; you’re procrastinating. You might tell yourself that you’re just “too busy,” or maybe that you’re waiting for the perfect time to write. And yes, curveballs derail your good intentions and expectations on a daily basis, and excuses can seem so undeniably legitimate when you make them. But can you truly not find fifteen minutes to write?

Procrastination, especially if you’re a perfectionist, often stems from fear, anxiety, or overwhelm. Avoidance feels much easier, at least in the moment. But you’re here to finish your book, so here’s some tough love: When you procrastinate, you choose to procrastinate, according to Neil Fiore, author of The Now Habit. This isn’t because you’re lazy or lack willpower, but because it temporarily helps you cope with fear and pressure. Knowing that you have a choice empowers you to make a different one.

Also understand that procrastination is a self-reinforcing behavior. The more you do it, the more prone you are to continue to do it. Make no mistake about it. The good news is that the adage “success begets success” is true, too—the more you write, the more apt you’ll be to continue to write. The sense of accomplishment that follows taking action feels good, which means you’ll likely want to write the more you do it.

Elizabeth’s history of procrastinating dates back at least to fourth grade, when her teacher, Miss Pike, made her look up the word in the thick, red Merriam-Webster’s dictionary on her desk. Suffice it to say, the definition wasn’t a deterrent. It wasn’t until much later that the work of time-management guru Edwin Bliss inspired two of her favorite, most successful strategies for combating her tendency to put things off until the very last minute: Take one next step, and prioritize tasks that are important but not urgent.

Take one next step

In 1976—decades before David Allen trademarked the phrase “Getting Things Done” and wrote his bestseller of the same name—Edwin Bliss wrote a brief, humble book also called Getting Things Done. Both authors built on ideas from Alan Lakein’s 1973 book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.

Elizabeth read Bliss’s book in 2010, and it rocked her world. Bliss advocates for finely slicing and conquering tasks by breaking them down into instantly achievable steps and capitalizing on tidbits of time. Each “one next step” can be as granular as you want. Three next steps might take less than a minute: Sit down, wake up your computer, and open a file. Your next step might be to write one sentence. Once you do one step, you’re very likely to keep going. That one minute in front of the screen magically becomes ten or twenty minutes of writing. That one sentence becomes a paragraph. Paragraphs transform into chapters. To keep her to-do lists from becoming overwhelming, Elizabeth still simply lists one next step per project.

Prioritize tasks that are important but not urgent

Bliss’s book also introduced Elizabeth to what has become known as the Eisenhower matrix, based on President Dwight David Eisenhower’s method of ranking tasks by importance and urgency. Tasks are grouped into quadrants:

• Important and urgent: Do now the most significant tasks with the most rapidly approaching deadlines.

• Important but not urgent: Schedule on a calendar significant tasks that don’t have pressing deadlines.

• Not important but urgent: Delegate time-sensitive tasks that are less significant.

• Not important and not urgent: Eliminate tasks that are insignificant and not time-bound.

Unless you have a publishing deadline that adds front-burner status to the equation, writing a book often falls into the “important but not urgent” quadrant—the quadrant that has a high payoff but is too often overshadowed by anything that’s time-critical. That’s why it’s so easy to spend years “writing a book” and have almost nothing to show for it.

One way to avoid this common pitfall is to schedule time for writing, which we discuss in more detail later.

You’re managing a lot in your life, and, yes, “important and urgent” tasks demand a great deal of time, energy, and attention. But when you ruthlessly evaluate the “importance and urgency” of the multitude of things you do in any given day or week, you may very well discover that “not important” tasks take up more time than you perceived. Actively cull tasks that are urgent but not important, and say no to what’s not urgent and not important. Then devote the time you save to tasks that are important but not urgent—your manuscript, for example.

Don’t wait for the perfect time to write

If you wait for the stars to perfectly align before you write, you’ll never get your manuscript done. You will always find excuses to delay. Instead, accept that the definition of a writer is someone who writes. Not perfectly, but consistently. You need to sit your butt down in a chair (unless you’ve embraced a standing desk, which we’ll allow) and start putting words in a document. You write, and you rewrite. Put it on repeat. Just like athletes and musicians practice, so must you write. The more you do, the easier it gets.

Common roadblock: perfectionism

Writing is an iterative process. It’s not a single perfect take. A first draft is just that, the first of many iterations, but you still have to get it done. Trust us when we say it does not have to be flawless. In fact, it won’t be. Nothing will slow you down faster than trying to write perfect prose at this stage. Yet, with so many authors, a fear of not executing perfectly at every step becomes the reason they stop putting words on the page—or never start in the first place.

Yes, as writers, we may obsess over alluring alliterations and correctly placed modifiers, but these stylistic things do not matter when the premise of your book isn’t finely tuned and it’s taking ten months to write ten thousand words. So here are some tips.

Remember that “some things you just get done”

In addition to being a recovering procrastinator, Elizabeth has had to learn to let go of her very-Virgo tendency toward perfectionism. Now she listens to her mom’s voice in her head saying, “Some things you do, and some things you just get done.” The advice is easier to follow now as an adult than when she was a teenager and her mom insisted that getting sleep was more important than nailing the subjunctive tense in her French homework at midnight.

The first draft of your book will not be perfect. You simply need to get it done. Fais-le, c’est tout!

A corollary: Don’t waste time on lower-priority things, such as transitions between paragraphs. Save that time, focus, and energy for more important things, like finishing a full first draft. You can and will spit-polish every word—but in much later drafts, not now.

Quiet the critic in your head

A common downfall when you’re a perfectionist is listening to that critical voice in your head that insists you must edit and refine whatever you’ve written before moving on—and absolutely before anyone else sees your writing. This inner voice will slow down your thinking (and consequently your writing) and wear down your confidence. You’ll get stuck spinning your wheels very early in the manuscript, maybe never moving beyond the first chapter you write.

But let’s say you do manage to write a complete first draft—and a beautifully crafted one at that. You still need to revise it, and you may need to cut text for reasons such as removing repetition, improving flow, or meeting a word count limit. If you’ve spent hours wordsmithing those sentences, you may be reluctant to make needed cuts. Remind that voice insisting that your writing be flawless that you (or a copy editor) will remedy any blemishes later.

Acknowledging the critical voice and then choosing to move on anyway—a strategy recommended by Shawn Costello Whooley and Holly Yates in The Inner Critic Workbook, which Marisa worked on—can make you feel more empowered. You’ve got this.

Embrace the journey

So now you know that your first draft won’t be perfect, not even close. If you’re a perfectionist, this truth bomb may make you anxious and even give you the heebie-jeebies. Consequently, you may be less willing to give yourself the freedom to get the words down when you suspect (much less expect and accept) that they could be better. Rest assured, the words will get better, but meanwhile, something on the page is better than a blank document. We encourage you to embrace the process of writing—the journey—complete with its bumps and imperfections.

Along these lines, we’re a bit enamored with Carol Dweck’s research on success, particularly her focus on the value of process versus product in achieving goals. If you haven’t already, read her book Mindset. When you focus on the process of improvement, like revising your manuscript, you’re more likely to be intrinsically motivated to persevere, tackle challenges head-on, and not only do the work but enjoy doing it. With this approach, you can recognize that the necessity of revising and improving your manuscript is simply part of the writing process, not a judgment on you or your abilities.

If, instead, you focus primarily on the product or current outcome, you’re extrinsically motivated—and more likely to stall out for fear of failure, judge yourself as inadequate, or more easily give up when faced with challenges. The magic happens in the revising, not in getting it right the first time. Instead of aiming to write the perfect book, aim to write consistently and revise thoughtfully. Your final manuscript, a polished diamond, will emerge from this process.

Common roadblock: impostor syndrome

Whereas perfectionism has roots in the fear of being seen as flawed, impostor syndrome has roots in the fear of being seen as a fraud. It’s what stops many writers from being published. According to 2022 data from the Survey Center on American Life, impostor syndrome is felt by roughly half of all adults ages eighteen to forty-nine. And it’s not difficult to imagine that, if you’ve never written a book before, you may be feeling insecure in your ability to pull it off.

This is how we see impostor syndrome affect authors: Like the insect in Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar, it gnaws at your self-worth. First, it chews a hole in what you believe you are capable of—creating a compelling premise, putting together a strong outline, writing an engaging chapter—stuff you have the intellectual and physical capacity for, yet now feel somehow beyond your ability to do. Then, it takes a bite out of what you believe you know—your studies, research, lived experiences—things you’ve been taught or have done for years somehow start to seem invalid or inadequate. Finally, it chomps right through what you believe about yourself—that you’re credible, authoritative, worthy—qualities that are core to your identity suddenly seem untrue.

If you have stalled in your writing, check whether impostor syndrome may be a factor. Do you find yourself second-guessing how to write (your ability) or what to write (your knowledge), or asking yourself, Who do you think you are to be writing? (your identity). Are you deeply concerned that peers may expose you as a fake? Are you worried that you’ll be attacked for writing the “wrong” thing?

Let’s look at some strategies for countering impostor syndrome.

Understand the fear response

Perhaps you didn’t feel like an impostor when you started writing. But then things got challenging, and you started to doubt your ability, your knowledge, and yourself. Maybe negative thoughts flooded your mental space. But consider this: Those thoughts aren’t true; they’re a reaction to your fear of being judged.

What’s true is that your situation is new and scary. Your mind is trying to keep you safe. The negative messages are your brain’s insurance policy against suffering; if it can keep you from the pain of shame, it’s done its job. The critical thoughts will likely continue the more you find success with writing. The best thing to do, according to acceptance and commitment therapy, is to acknowledge each thought and say, “I get it, you’re hoping I’ll stop writing. But what you’re saying isn’t true—it’s just a fear response—and I’m going to keep writing. Bye!”

Act “as if”

We don’t love the “fake it ’til you make it” expression, partly because we want to encourage you to be authentic—for example, by refining your unique voice as an author. So if you lack confidence in your ability to write a book, don’t fake being an author. Instead, as you work toward seeing yourself as one, act “as if.” Psychologist William James first suggested in 1884 that acting as if something is true can help make it happen. In the early twentieth century, psychologist Alfred Adler developed “act as if” as a therapeutic technique. Today, fields as varied as business and the dramatic arts have also embraced this concept. We recommend you do too.

Put the title of your upcoming book in your email signature. Tell friends and colleagues about the book you’re writing. Give webinars or in-person talks. Post about your book on social media. These types of activities can help boost your confidence and build your author platform.

Don’t underestimate the power of simply saying to yourself and others, “I am an author.” Repeat as necessary. In a similar vein, banish the word “trying.” Do not tell people, “I am trying to write a book.” Say instead, “I’m writing a book!”

Amy Sherman, a friend of Elizabeth, left a corporate branding job to become a food writer. How did she make the switch without feeling like an impostor? She simply ordered Moo business cards that listed her title as “food writer” and handed them out. (The original Moo card format stood out for its quirky smaller size and color images.) Her cards also had the URL of her then-nascent, now award-winning cooking blog, Cooking with Amy. She has since published multiple cookbooks.

Be kind to yourself

Imagine you signed on as your BFF’s writing buddy. Things have been going surprisingly well—their outline and first four chapters were, in your opinion, fantastic. You offered constructive feedback, and your friend has been gracious and excited about making revisions. But suddenly your BFF stopped sharing chapters and started making excuses for not writing. When you finally pin your friend down to ask what’s going on, they reply, “I’m not qualified to write this book. No one will read it anyway. I was dumb to believe I could do this.”

What would you say in response?

Take your cue from Kristin Neff, author of Fierce Self-Compassion: Whatever compassion, kindness, inspiration, or advice you’d offer your BFF, say it to yourself. Every time you have doubt, every time you think you’re not worthy enough, say to yourself what you’d say to a friend in the same situation. In fact, say those words to your amazing self right now.

Accountability

While in the end we’re all responsible for our own actions, let’s explore how to enhance accountability when it comes to getting your book done.

Make a schedule and stick to it

Earlier, we talked about how writing a book can fall into the “important but not urgent” quadrant if you don’t have a publishing deadline. We highly recommend creating a schedule that includes specific milestones with deadlines. To set yourself up for success, book time in your calendar and set realistic interim deadlines. Also, take your schedule seriously. It’s so very easy to be “too busy” to write. We challenge you to set daily and weekly goals.

If you have blocks of time, like weekends or early mornings, you can devote to writing, great. But if you don’t, take advantage of smaller nuggets. You might be surprised by what you can achieve in fifteen minutes, especially if you devote that much time every day to writing. This is similar to the Pomodoro Technique—developed by Francesco Cirillo and inspired by a tomato-shaped timer—where you work without distractions (for example, turn off all digital notifications) for twenty-five minutes and then take a five-minute break.

Track your progress

We’re big believers in giving yourself props for what you did accomplish versus beating yourself up over what you didn’t. One way to do this is to document on paper the things you get done. Consider using a wall or desk calendar (along with stickers, as Elizabeth does) to track the time you spend writing and what you accomplish; it’s old-school but a good tactile and visual reminder of your achievements. It can also be a resource to help troubleshoot if you get off-course—you can use it to identify patterns, such as being less productive at certain times of day.

Digital tracking also works. For instance, while we were writing this book, we didn’t delete tasks on our shared to-do list when we finished them. Instead, we put a giant check mark next to each one and moved it to the bottom of the list. It felt terrific to have this visual reminder of just how many tasks we had completed.

Recruit an accountability buddy

Just as we encourage you to consider partnering with a writing buddy, consider finding an accountability buddy to offer you support—your own personal cheerleader. Look for someone you feel comfortable confiding in, who will encourage you to meet deadlines, puzzle through problems, and persevere. Choose a person who has a positive attitude about you accomplishing your goal to write a book and who will give you affirming feedback—preferably someone who knows you well enough to nudge or even push you if needed and not let you get away with making excuses.

A BFF or sibling who understands you deeply can be a good choice. When they say something motivating, put that supportive voice on a playback loop in your head. For example, Elizabeth would replay Marisa saying, “Writing is hard; you can do hard things.”

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Hire a pro

Another way to stay accountable is to hire a book coach. Put simply, sometimes money talks. If you’re paying for a person to create an editorial schedule and hold you to deadlines, you might have a better chance of success. That’s how gym memberships ostensibly work, right? Of course, book coaches are more than glorified schedule setters. They serve as confidants, word wizards, organizational mavens. They challenge you to write the best version of your book, guide you through the process, and hold you to high standards.

Form helpful habits

Sometimes everything you do, or don’t do, boils down to good habits—or a lack thereof. There are a bazillion books on habit formation, and some of them are profoundly helpful. If you feel that you need structure to complete your book, there are many proven strategies that can help you build a consistent, dependable system for writing.

Marisa prefers the habit stacking method, borrowed from S. J. Scott’s book of the same name and popularized in James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Basically, you create a new habit by hitching it to an existing one. So, for example, if you have a cup of tea every morning, you can attach the task of writing to drinking your tea. Ultimately, the writing itself becomes a habit by association.

Of course, no matter how dedicated you are in establishing a habit of working on your manuscript, the process can fall apart if you lose sight of your why. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to reflect back on the reasons you are writing this book in the first place.

Whether you’re writing this book to help people, advance your field, or experience the sheer joy of accomplishment, let that reason motivate you. If procrastination, perfectionism, or impostor syndrome is keeping you up at night, let your why be the reason you get up in the morning. If you didn’t print out “The Premise” homework, shape it into a sign, and post it nearby, consider doing that now to give yourself a visual reminder of your North Star as an author.

Set SMART goals

When setting a goal—whether a writing goal or anything having to do with getting published—it can be helpful to revisit Carol Dweck’s process versus product orientation. You’ll recall that a product goal is what you hope to ultimately achieve, the end result. For example, “publish a book.” The challenge with going all in on a product goal is that the outcome might not be entirely within your control. A publisher might reject your proposal, or another person might come out with a virtually identical manuscript weeks before you’d planned to launch yours.

On the other hand, a process goal is the thing you do to get to the end result. It’s task-oriented—for example, “write thirty minutes a day” or “write 350 words a day.” If you do the work regularly, it becomes a habit, and the outcome gets met naturally over time. Because these are tasks you’ll naturally refine as you repeat them, your work becomes streamlined and more efficient—even enjoyable. Dweck encourages a process orientation, and so do we.

To set an effective process goal, we recommend using the SMART framework, originally developed by George T. Doran in 1981 and slightly massaged over the years:

SPECIFIC: I will write the first half of chapter 3, which explains the first week in my ten-week program.

MEASURABLE: I will spend four hours total writing the first half of chapter 3, which will be about 2,500 words.

ACHIEVABLE: I will write for two hours today and two hours on Thursday.

RELEVANT: Chapter 3 will be my sample chapter, serving as a model to write similar chapters more efficiently.

TIME-SENSITIVE: My writing buddy agreed to review my draft over the weekend, so I need to have the first half completed by Friday.

Surround yourself with inspiration

Sometimes, when you’re feeling stuck, a simple change in your environment might help. Can you optimize your soundscape, for instance? Some authors get energized in a noisy, crowded coffee shop. If you thrive in quietude, noise-canceling headphones might be a nonnegotiable. Or maybe you just need the perfect playlist to get you in the groove. “When I was working on my book, I was productive under the dryer at the salon and getting my car serviced at the dealership,” shared Billye Jones. “I work best in places where I can’t escape.”

Surround yourself with objects that speak to you, if you’d like. Write inspirational messages on sticky notes. Hang artwork. Create an inspiration board with keepsakes like photos, greeting cards, and handwritten notes. Clear away clutter.

The simple task of turning her desk ninety degrees was a game changer for Elizabeth. Her desk now faces glass patio doors overlooking the greenery-filled backyard, rather than a kitchen wall. Marisa prefers olfactory stimulation; she adds several drops of lavender and lemongrass essential oils to an infuser with a one-hour timer and writes until it stops.

The right writing environment may even help you experience flow, the positive mental state where you’re so fully immersed in what you’re doing that it feels effortless, described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his bestseller Flow. If you can get there, there’s nothing like going with the flow.

Take time to celebrate

While a lot of the tips we shared are about overcoming obstacles, we’d also like to remind you to celebrate victories, large and small. Go ahead and reward yourself whenever you sit at your desk and crank out text—especially if you had scheduled it but really did not want to do it. We find celebratory cocktails do the trick, but chocolate also works.

Give yourself a pat on the back when you stop yourself from making excuses or procrastinating. Got positive feedback? Soak it up like a sponge. Heard from a beta reader that your advice changed their life? That’s gold. Silenced that inner voice that drags you down? Awesome. We’re so proud!

Surround yourself with people who believe in you and your book. Share your victories. Say thanks to compliments. You deserve the accolades.

About the Authors

Marisa Solis is a book coach, developmental editor, and cofounder of Book Structure Pros, a boutique editorial services company. Since her start in travel guidebook publishing in 1999, she has worked on more than 500 nonfiction books. Her specialties are self-help and wellness. Marisa lives in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Dougherty is a book coach, developmental editor, and cofounder of Book Structure Pros. She has worked in publishing since 1988 and was an executive editor at Weldon Owen. Her focus is on parenting, health and wellness, and women’s leadership. Elizabeth holds a master’s from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and lives in Palo Alto, California.

On Wednesday, September 16, I’ll be joined by India Lena González, senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, for a candid conversation about what makes a debut nonfiction book, and its author, stand out.

Backstory: I met India at the Whiting Awards lunch a few months ago. When she told me where she worked, I got nostalgic and immediately started reminiscing about how, in my early twenties, I used to pore over the long lists of magazines and writing contests in Poets & Writers Magazine, pen in hand, circling my favorites. (To her credit, she did not walk away).

India oversees the magazine’s New Nonfiction feature, an annual look at some of the year’s best debut memoirs, essay collections, and hybrid nonfiction. This year’s edition follows five writers who took very different paths to their first books.

We’ll talk about why those books caught India’s attention, what editors in general notice when deciding which emerging voices to spotlight, and how new writers can attract the attention of literary publications. We’ll also talk about the magazine’s popular “5 Over 50” series, and what it reveals about breaking through later in life.

Since this is a live Q&A, you’ll have the chance to ask India your own questions. Bring good ones!

Wednesday, September 16
1:00 p.m. ET
Live and exclusively for paid Author Insider members

Paid and founding members can register for the live Q&A on the Author Insider Events Calendar.

With a full-time job, three kids, and six pets, I’ve never been able to pull off a daily writing routine. Instead, I write on weekends and the occasional free evening but, most of all, while on vacation (ruining the whole take-it-easy ethos of a vacation, but you have to find time somewhere).

Then a few years ago, a writer-friend to whom I’d been complaining about not getting enough writing done challenged me to write every single day for a month. “Just get up early every morning and write for fifteen minutes.”

It seemed worth a shot. So I did it.

Annnnnd it sucked. I was ridiculously groggy and just wanted to go back to sleep. Worse, I knew that there was no more sleep coming my way, because any minute I’d have to get my kids ready for school, and the whole machinery of the day would kick into gear.

So I shelved the idea of a daily writing habit until recently, when I interviewed Ryan Hawk about his new book, The Price of Becoming. Ryan is the host of The Learning Leader Show, one of the world’s most popular business podcasts, where he’s spent the past decade interviewing hundreds of leaders, entrepreneurs, athletes, and thinkers about what separates good from great. In The Price of Becoming, he distills those conversations, along with his own experience, into a practical guide to sustained high performance.

In his Author Questionnaire, Ryan explains that he woke up early and wrote every morning for 200 consecutive days. Not only is that a wildly impressive feat, it also reflects the central argument of his book: excellence isn’t built through occasional bursts of inspiration but through thousands of small, consistent actions.

While I'm still allergic to 5:30 a.m. writing sessions, I have to admit that he makes a compelling case.

In today's Author Questionnaire, Ryan discusses the books that shaped him, the habits that sustain him, and what he's learned after interviewing hundreds of high performers.

21 Questions with Ryan Hawk

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Getting up early and writing every morning for 200 consecutive days.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

The great ones make it look easy. It’s not.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Looking at my phone: Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Sometimes. I like to see which parts of my books (or my podcast) are resonating most with people. But my dad told me many years ago: “If you do anything of significance, people will write and talk about you. Don’t get too high from their praise or too low from their criticism. Keep working.” That’s helpful to remember.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Send it to my research assistant.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Marry: My podcast, The Learning Leader Show, is my full-time job and my favorite thing to do. I’ve been interviewing leaders and go-getters for over 10 years.

Kiss: Speaking. I love getting up on stages and sharing my message with others— it’s exciting and always a little bit different.

Kill: Nothing! I love newsletters too. Both the one I write every week, Mindful Monday, and the ones I read.

7. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I write emails to myself on my phone. Some of those stories have made it into my books with very little editing.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I go on walks. Sometimes with my wife. Sometimes with just my dog. We live near a beautiful park, and it’s helpful for me to be out in nature. I regularly stop and write in the notes app on my phone, or I write an email to myself.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Do what you say you’re gonna do. Follow through. Follow up.

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Morgan Housel and James Clear. Great family men. Incredible writers/thinkers/speakers, and they are genuinely kind and generous people.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

A cup of water.

12. How did you find your agent?

Dave Moldawer has helped a lot of my friends with their proposals over the years. I originally hired him to help me with that. We finished the proposal right as he was becoming a book agent with Writers House. It seemed like a natural fit for him to represent me (he knew the book better than anyone). For my first three books (Welcome to Management, The Pursuit of Excellence, The Score That Matters), I worked with Jim Levine. I got introduced to him by friends/authors who had been on my podcast. He was great, too.

13. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

What are the writing rules?

14. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I work with Claude and ChatGPT. Don’t use the others that much.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

I grew up playing sports. Went to college on a football scholarship. I learned discipline, consistency, preparation, how to bounce back from losing… So much learning from football. That’s helped me a lot as a writer.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Six or seven.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Wake up at 4:30 am. Stretch. Hydrate. Write for 90 minutes. Lift weights at the gym. Run. Read on the elliptical to cool down. Go on a walk with my wife. Have breakfast with my kids. Put my youngest daughter, Charlie, on the bus. Go to my studio. Record a podcast with a leader who’s putting a positive dent in the world. Have lunch with my wife. Meet with my leadership circle in the afternoon. Get Charlie off the bus at 3:58. Go to the pool/swim with family & friends. Go on a walk with my wife after dinner.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

I try to do it as much as possible. But sometimes I travel for a speaking gig, or our team is working with our clients in person.

18. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Probably about sports or movies. I love The Rewatchables. It’s a podcast where Bill Simmons and his co-hosts watch movies and deconstruct them. It’d be fun to do something like that

19. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

It’s still really hard to write good stuff. And the great ones make it look easy. But I think it’s hard for them too… At least that’s what they tell me.

20. Fill in the blank: In five years, successful authors will all be _____.

Writing every day.

21. What is your new book about?

The Price of Becoming is about the compounding practices of high performance. It will help you go to bed a little bit better than you were when you woke up.

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You can learn more about Ryan’s book here: The Price of Becoming

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Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

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Until next time,
Panio

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I dread being on camera. It’s hardly a shocking confession: most writers I know find the experience awkward and embarrassing. And yet, like it or not, being in front of a camera is pretty much unavoidable these days. Whether it’s podcasts, Substack Lives, virtual events, social media, or (rare, but it happens) TV appearances, a basic degree of on-camera skill has become essential for authors.

Unfortunately, most of us were never actually taught how to do it well. Case in point: the last Instagram video I shot took me 22 takes, and when I watched the final version, I ran out of the room clawing at my eyes like Oedipus.

So when the chance came up to interview Kim Rittberg, an award-winning video expert, media coach, and former executive producer at Netflix, People, and Us Weekly, of course I jumped at it.

Kim has spent years helping professionals communicate more clearly and confidently on video, combining deep media experience with practical coaching around presence, messaging, and storytelling. For authors, that means learning how to talk about your work in a way that feels both natural and persuasive, not to mention distinctly your own.

During our lively conversation, we covered a number of topics, including:

• How to sound prepared without sounding rehearsed

• Why to use bullet points instead of a teleprompter

• The difference between “supermodel mode” and “teacher mode”

• How to bring “dinner party energy” to an interview or video

• How to create stronger sound bites for podcasts and social media

• Kim’s four-step routine for calming yourself immediately before recording

Paid and founding members can watch the full conversation and read the edited transcript below:

Read more