The Manuscript Academy

We talk about how to submit during quarantine (Should you? Is publishing shut down? Is it really going as well as everyone says?), the importance of platform (and how selling nonfiction is different), and the emotional toll of rejections (and how agents feel about them). We also talk about how to make your writing seem effortless, what NYC life is like for new agents (hint: lots of bagels) and Amy’s new pitch panel, March 31. Learn more about that here: http://live.manuscriptacademy.com/amy/ Book a meeting or written critique with Amy here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/amy-bishop Find her on Twitter @amylizbishop.

We are so pleased to speak with writer and editor Vivian Lee about the importance of literary community, what it was like for her to work in publishing at Little A/Amazon, and how our industry has changed over the past decade. We also discuss California Pizza Kitchen, fusion cuisine, and the immigrant experience--finding the perfect Mother's Day present for the mother who traveled 7,000 miles for you--and how Vivian's writing and editing processes start with specific ideas and images and branch out to address the larger questions, both in the piece and in life. Vivian Lee is a writer and book editor. Her book list includes Matthew Salesses' The Hundred-Year Flood, Viet Dinh's After Disasters (PEN/Faulkner Finalist), Naima Coster's Halsey Street (Kirkus Prize Finalist), and Harold Schechter's Hell's Princess (A Washington Post Bestseller). She specializes in literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, including true crime, memoir, essays, and long-form reporting. In both fiction and nonfiction, she is interested in a strong story or narrative usually dealing with identity or relationships of any kind (family, personal versus body/nature/man. She is a 2018 PW Rising Star Honoree. Her writing can be found at The Los Angeles Times, Eater, ELLE.com, Catapult, and more. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a BA in Literary Journalism and from the New School University in New York with a MFA in Creative Writing (Non-Fiction). Originally from Los Angeles, she now resides in Queens. You can meet with her at https://manuscriptacademy.com/vivian-lee, and you can listen to the Carly Rae Jepsen song she mentions, For Sure, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7SVEmuAsvI

We speak with agent, author, and stand-up comedian (yes, really!) Barbara Poelle about the Venn diagram of editorial needs, not swearing before 10 a.m., and how breaking all the rules worked out spectacularly well for one of her clients. Barbara’s new book, Funny You Should Ask: Mostly Serious Answers to Mostly Serious Questions About the Book Publishing Industry, is half love letter and half guidebook for the publishing industry. What to Submit to Barbara: Barbara is looking for high octane thrillers, edgy mysteries, literary and upmarket fiction and YA. You can find her on twitter at @bpoelle.

We are so happy to talk with Tom Lutz. By day, he teaches creative writing at the University of California in Riverside and manages the LA Review of Books, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting writing about literature, culture and the arts. By night, he’s a rocker in bar bands. In between, he’s on a quest to visit every country in the world: 135 down, only 60 to go. This vagabond has dovetailed his wanderlust and passion for writing into seven nonfiction books—some on travel, one on the history of slackers, another on the history of tears. His first crime novel, Born Slippy, was published 1/14/2020. We talk about writing in odd places, making the leap from short to small pieces, the way characters (including a well-read sociopath) can surprise the writer with their dialogue, and tips for nourishing your creative life. You can learn more about Tom and his work at https://www.tomlutzwriter.com/.

Join us for a look inside a literary agent's inbox! Listen as she decides, in the moment, what to request, what to reject, and why. Stephanie Winter is an associate agent at P.S. Literary. She first joined the agency as an intern before becoming the agency’s relations assistant. Stephanie is a dedicated bookseller who holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto in English Literature and a M.A. in English: Issues in Modern Culture from University College London. Her experiences of living and traveling in and around Europe have left her eagerly devouring upmarket, fantasy, and non-fiction genres that make new worlds and perspectives come alive. Stephanie particularly appreciates strong characters who bend stereotypes, genders, and more. You can book a meeting or written critique with her here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/stephanie-winter And you can find her on Twitter and Instagram @ReadByStephanie

We are so excited to welcome internationally bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz to our podcast! Melissa is incredibly successful--she's written more than 50 books, and sold more than 8 million copies. But her path to publication was anything but easy. It took four agents and many "almost but not quite" responses to sell her first book. There are lunches she thought would turn into offers, and years of working at her day job and hoping for the best. Now, Melissa is at the top of her game--and has been known to write entire books in two weeks! But here’s the story behind all that. We talk procrastination, deadlines, and how her editors help work with her creative brain (and create false urgency! Hello, ideal team) to get everything in on time. We also discuss how she deals with writer's block, the editorial process (many times longer than her first draft!), how and why she gets to jump between genres and write everything from thrillers to sweet Hallmark movies. We talk everything from rejection postcards (yes, those were a thing!) to the YA "gold rush," to genre switching for authors, and how to do it the smart way. You can listen to the first page of her book, The Birthday Girl, here (and the voice actor is also seriously excellent, so do give it a listen): https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/586465/the-birthday-girl/?ref=PRHD9DF6A1939 And you can find Melissa online at melissa-delacruz.com.

We talk with editor-turned-agent Hannah VanVels about how to keep an agent reading, what to put in your first three chapters, and why publishing takes so long (and sometimes even the pieces we’re *most excited about* have to wait). Plus, we discuss her current wishlist, unusual rom com mash-ups, and the different tactics used by editors vs. agents when reading submissions. We also talk about nudging authors (can we have your manuscript, say, now?), the border between editing and over-editing (something Hannah is passionate about) and reading in odd places (and risking minor injury) to get it done sooner.  This mini-episode is short, fun, and safe to listen to around kids. We also discuss Hannah’s class, The First Three Chapters, THIS Monday, January 27, 8:30pm EST. You can sign up here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/hannah-vanvels You can find Hannah on Twitter @hannahvanvels or Instagram @hannahvanvels.

We loved talking with Dana Kaye, a publicist who not only does amazing work for her clients, but who comes up with creative ways to help more writers--and their books--succeed.  How do you know if it's worth hiring a publicist? And, if you can't, what can you do on your own? Dana breaks these questions into concrete steps to determine whether you'll get a return on investment--and what you can do for yourself and your work along the way. Contrary to the image of the shiny, terrifying, shoulder pad-wielding publicist, Dana is delightfully approachable, fun, and heart-forward.  She also discusses special tips for introverts, simple tricks for improving your likability, and how to keep your interactions from feeling transactional. Plus, we talk some about the state of the world, and some of Dana's plans to save it. Hope you enjoy! Like what Dana has to say? You can learn more about her at https://kayepublicity.com/, and about Your Breakout Book at https://kayepublicity.com/yourbreakoutbook. Use code MANUSCRIPT15 for 15% off.

Happy New Year! Julie's checking to see how you are all doing and to talk to you about resolutions for 2020. Maybe if you are on Twitter or any form of social media, you’ve noticed people chatting about all of their successes and book deals coming out. To those people, we're so incredibly proud of you. Here's a pep talk for everyone in the query trenches, hoping to make this decade the best writing years yet. Learn more about our podcast here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/podcast

This is a very special episode—our LIVE-recorded Holiday Party & Write-In 2019! Book Coach Anna Conathan joins us for an evening of prizes, surprises, writing prompts Q&A, trivia and more! Please note that this episode includes some adult language and themes—so don’t listen in public without earbuds. If you’d like to join our next event live, join our mailing list at ManuscriptAcademy.com/subscribe. You can view the live-recorded VIDEO version of this (with the text chat!) at https://manuscriptacademy.com/holidayparty2019 Need a gift for the critique partner who has everything--or maybe for you? Instant download certificates for membership, classes, critiques, consultations and more available at ManuscriptAcademy.com/gift. Gifts start at just $9.95. Anna Conathan Coaching works with humans looking to move ancient obstacles, improve communication in challenging relationships, begin exciting new endeavors, or free themselves from tired old stories that keep them small in their lives. Trained through the International Coach Federation accredited program Accomplishment Coaching, Anna is passionately committed to helping people transform their own lives through powerful motivation, deep empathy, compassionate curiosity and her innate sense of humor. Anna Conathan is a personal coach trained through the premiere, International Coach Federation accredited program, Accomplishment Coaching. She is dedicated to helping people transform their lives through powerful motivation, deep empathy, compassionate curiosity, no-nonsense truth-telling, and her innate sense of humor. A graduate of Emerson College’s School of Performing Arts in Boston, Anna went on to a successful career as an actress, stand-up comic and screenwriter in Los Angeles and New York, where she learned to appreciate her species’ spectacular ability to create, connect, transform, and sling bullshit. Anna has pushed gurneys on "ER," opened for Paula Poundstone, worked as an in-house writer for Disney Animation, and penned original and adapted screenplays and TV scripts for Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. But her performance art skills didn’t really show their true value until she became a mother, which gave Anna the opportunity to embrace change, get comfortable with the unknown, and dig into her imagination in a new way. Parenting, as Anna likes to say, is the longest game of improv ever played. As a lifelong Human Behavior enthusiast and unofficial President of the Always Talk to Strangers club, Anna is here on this rock to serve as a suspension bridge of communication, a doula for tentative creatives and a toasty incubator for other people’s ambitions that are ready to hatch. When Anna isn’t coaching she can be found hauling traps as a sternman on a lobster boat in her home state of Maine, helping train future doctors in the ways of empathy as a standardized patient, messing around on stage with her Portland theater buddies, or walking the beach with her handsome husband, hilarious son and dingbat chocolate lab.

We are so pleased to invite Anna Conathan, of Anna Conathan Coaching, to the podcast. She's one of our special guests for the 2019 Holiday Party! Get on the list--it's free, fun, available on any smart device. Get yourself on the list (and enter our raffle) here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/rsvp Need a gift for the critique partner who has everything--or maybe for you? Instant download certificates for membership, classes, critiques, consultations and more available at ManuscriptAcademy.com/gift. Gifts start at $25. Anna Conathan Coaching works with humans looking to move ancient obstacles, improve communication in challenging relationships, begin exciting new endeavors, or free themselves from tired old stories that keep them small in their lives. Trained through the International Coach Federation accredited program Accomplishment Coaching, Anna is passionately committed to helping people transform their own lives through powerful motivation, deep empathy, compassionate curiosity and her innate sense of humor. Anna Conathan is a personal coach trained through the premiere, International Coach Federation accredited program, Accomplishment Coaching. She is dedicated to helping people transform their lives through powerful motivation, deep empathy, compassionate curiosity, no-nonsense truth-telling, and her innate sense of humor. A graduate of Emerson College’s School of Performing Arts in Boston, Anna went on to a successful career as an actress, stand-up comic and screenwriter in Los Angeles and New York, where she learned to appreciate her species’ spectacular ability to create, connect, transform, and sling bullshit. Anna has pushed gurneys on "ER," opened for Paula Poundstone, worked as an in-house writer for Disney Animation, and penned original and adapted screenplays and TV scripts for Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. But her performance art skills didn’t really show their true value until she became a mother, which gave Anna the opportunity to embrace change, get comfortable with the unknown, and dig into her imagination in a new way. Parenting, as Anna likes to say, is the longest game of improv ever played. As a lifelong Human Behavior enthusiast and unofficial President of the Always Talk to Strangers club, Anna is here on this rock to serve as a suspension bridge of communication, a doula for tentative creatives and a toasty incubator for other people’s ambitions that are ready to hatch. When Anna isn’t coaching she can be found hauling traps as a sternman on a lobster boat in her home state of Maine, helping train future doctors in the ways of empathy as a standardized patient, messing around on stage with her Portland theater buddies, or walking the beach with her handsome husband, hilarious son and dingbat chocolate lab.

You likely know Heather Cashman as Brenda Drake's partner in PitchWars. Now an agent at Storm Literary, she brings us wisdom from both sides of the desk--what rejections really mean, what it feels like to send them, and how you should interpret them. Plus, we talk about what it's like to be a new agent, the rejections agents face, and so much more. You can learn more about Heather at heathercashman.com. Included with this episode is an invite to our e-Holiday party, December 16, 8:30pm EDT. Head to ManuscriptAcademy.com/RSVP to get on the list. You can also add #MSWL to your holiday wish list at ManuscriptAcademy.com/gifts. There, you'll find gift certificates--for the critique partner who has everything, or for you--that start at $25. Happy Thanksgiving!

We love Norma Perez-Hernandez (editor at Kensington Publishing Corp) for her warmth and humor, and the way she makes publishing approachable, thoughtful and kind. You'll hear how much she cares for her authors, the enormous number of things she does each day, and her ideas on how we can move the industry forward. We also talk about how genres change--how rom coms simply could not work when she started in publishing but are thriving now--and what this means for trends in the industry. We're sure you'll love Norma just as much as we do.  Norma Perez-Hernandez is editor at Kensington Publishing Corp. She has worked on a variety of projects, including fiction, romance, mysteries, thrillers, and non-fiction. A New York City native, Norma studied English literature at the Macaulay Honors College at The City College of New York and is a graduate of the Publishing Certificate Program at City College. She is thrilled to build a list with diverse authors and books. @normajeanesays

Ever wish you could carry around a writing class in your pocket? One with special agent and editor guests, a rad* theme, and way too much coffee?  Now you can. Our Write-In Workshop from last week (you can still see the full replay here, if you'd like the video too: https://manuscriptacademy.com/back-to-school-write-in) features all the ways thinking about your character in school--plus the resulting conflicts, social hierarchies, friends and crushes--can give you a deeper understanding of that person on the page.  We've left in pauses so you can follow along. Grab your favorite school supplies, maybe your earbuds or your Bluetooth speaker**, and write with 300 of your new best friends. We'll read some clips of your examples, and think you, too, will be impressed with the strength and talent of this community. Special shout-out to Kiana Nguyen, agent at Donald Maass Literary Agency, and Molly Cusick, editor at Sourcebooks, for being our surprise guests.  Hope this finds you well and enjoying everything the season has to offer.  All best, Jessica and Julie *Bet that word choice made more sense when you learned the theme, amirite? **Jessica really likes this one, because it's sand-resistant, and no, we promise we are not sponsored by VicTsing, we just like it for a more immersive podcast experience that can fall in the sink a few times when you're doing dishes and it's all good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYYCGKW/ref=sspa_dk_detail_5?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B00MYYCGKW&pd_rd_w=kugpu&pf_rd_p=45a72588-80f7-4414-9851-786f6c16d42b&pd_rd_wg=GO2mc&pf_rd_r=04MTQCD63BHTFFT1QBQ3&pd_rd_r=8c2763d0-8380-48d9-a8e7-7aca86dbde0c&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFJTlhEQ1IxRllKNEwmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAzNzc3MDMxSDY4U0VKMFpGMjVJJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODQ5MTczSDRVM0pTWkJMODg1JndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfZGV0YWlsJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Welcome to the #MSWL Day Guide! We speak with KK Hendin and Jessica Sinsheimer about the beginnings of MSWL, how best to search the feeds (and find your agent and editor matches), what to do with that information, and how to improve your chances by showing your work. Search techniques are at about 6:15, and reference ManuscriptWishList.com/search. Need help? Tweet us @KKHendin and @Jsinsheim and @MSWLMA View our new season of live workshops + special events panels, classes and more at ManuscriptAcademy.com/live. Our FREE Write-In Workshop is Monday, September 30, 8:30pm EDT. Want to ask an agent for feedback on your query? Head over to our educational site, ManuscriptAcademy.com/10-minutes-with-an-expert. Follow @MSWLMA for a $10 off coupon.