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Episode 16: Advice to Young Writers with Guest Jill Williamson
25 Plays11 hours ago
Join us as we sit down with multi-award-winning speculative fiction author Jill Williamson to talk about all the things we wish we'd known when we were younger—both chronologically and in our writing careers. Between Paul, Lindsay, and Jill, we bring a combined thousand years of publishing experience (give or take a century), and we're sharing the hard-earned lessons, practical advice, and encouragement we wish someone had given us sooner. So grab a chair, pour yourself a cup of tea, and consider us your Gandalf, your Obi-Wan, your Uncle Iroh, reporting for duty.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jill Williamson
00:00:14
Lindsay Franklin
Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Lindsay Franklin.
00:00:17
Paul Regnier
And I'm Paul Regner.
00:00:19
Lindsay Franklin
And today we have a very, very special guest with us.
00:00:23
Paul Regnier
Yay.
00:00:23
Lindsay Franklin
Everybody say yay and welcome and hello to the amazing Jill Williamson. Yay!
00:00:30
Paul Regnier
Woo.
00:00:32
Jill Williamson
Hello.
00:00:34
Lindsay Franklin
Jill is a fantastic author of fantasy, science fiction, all kinds of different things. Jill is, we were just talking about her current book count,
00:00:44
Lindsay Franklin
35, is that right? 35 books, amazing.
00:00:47
Paul Regnier
wow
00:00:48
Lindsay Franklin
And Jill has been in the industry for a long time, number of years, done so many different things. And we decided she would be the perfect guest for the topic that we are discussing today.
00:00:59
Lindsay Franklin
so Jill, I'm going to give you a moment to talk about what you are doing currently in ah your publishing life, your publishing adventures.
Expanding the Blood of Kings Universe
00:01:10
Jill Williamson
Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. So I have been working with Sunrise Publishing, and they are doing a spinoff series of my very first trilogy I ever published, the Blood of Kings series.
00:01:22
Jill Williamson
ah Blood of Kings trilogy was three books, but now we have more. So we've been writing spinoff stories called the Blood of Kings and Legends. And there's going to be eight books in that series. ah Books, book five and six come out this summer.
00:01:34
Jill Williamson
um Not written by me, actually, which is kind of fun. So we had other authors write to write in my world and I got to be their editor. um And then I did write some. And so I've written a series with them as well called the King's Spy series, which is just more side characters for my gigantic world.
00:01:51
Jill Williamson
So that goes to show you if you build a big world, maybe you could write forever in it. I don't know. But that's what we're doing right now. And it's a lot of fun.
00:01:57
Lindsay Franklin
It's so awesome.
00:01:58
Paul Regnier
That's what Tolkien did. That's
00:02:00
Jill Williamson
Bye.
00:02:00
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, it's true. And hey, Sanderson, right? Like, hey, people do this, right?
00:02:03
Paul Regnier
true.
00:02:05
Lindsay Franklin
And I had the opportunity to read one of these books for endorsement. I think that was last year. I can't remember now the timing, but it was so good. And it was so fun to revisit this world that was one of the first worlds that I dove into when I first got into the industry and was reading, you know, other authors in my space in the Christian fantasy space.
00:02:25
Lindsay Franklin
And so it was just such a cool, full circle moment to see somebody else writing in that world. And it was amazing. So I love this, this project that you're doing right now.
00:02:36
Lindsay Franklin
It's super cool.
00:02:38
Jill Williamson
Yeah, it's delightfully fun. um And also stressful at times because ah it's hard to it's hard to let people write in your world, but it's also really hard for them. And I feel so bad for them because I'll say things like, oh, that character died two books ago or things like that.
00:02:51
Lindsay Franklin
Whoops. Yes.
00:02:52
Jill Williamson
And it's like, oh, they did? I didn't think they did. and it must be kind of like writing like on ah at a writer's room for a TV show a little bit where you're all kind of like saying, no way, that's not what we did. So it's been, it's but it's been, it's just, it's really a life kind of a,
00:03:03
Lindsay Franklin
yeah
00:03:07
Jill Williamson
lifetime. I don't know. I don't know how to say i have no words. um It's a special thing that is a really special thing that I never thought I'd get to do. So I'm really enjoying it.
00:03:16
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, almost like ah like a bucket list item sort of thing as as an author to have your world be you know, something that other writers would be excited to write in that a publisher is like, yeah, let's revisit and and write more stories there.
00:03:27
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:03:31
Lindsay Franklin
I could, it's like one of those bucket list things that you don't even think to put on your bucket list. And then it happens, you're like, this is cool.
00:03:37
Jill Williamson
Exactly.
00:03:38
Lindsay Franklin
This is so cool. I didn't ever think to have on my bucket list that somebody would make like fan art for my book. And then when that happened for the first time, it was like, this is amazing. You know, it's one of those kinds of things.
00:03:48
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:03:49
Lindsay Franklin
i think So. That is super, super cool. So what we are talking about today, this is actually a listener requested topic, which I thought was a a super wonderful suggestion.
Advice for Young Writers
00:04:03
Lindsay Franklin
And she asked us to talk about our top advice for young aspiring writers and all the things that we wish we would have known when we were young, when we were first starting out. And paul and I decided that Jill would be the perfect guest to talk about this with us because Jill has a lot of years and a lot of experience in mentoring young writers, working with teens. And so um I want to kind of plug your Go Teen Writers books that you've written. So you've written um two craft books. Is that right?
00:04:38
Lindsay Franklin
for teen writers co-written.
00:04:38
Jill Williamson
co-written. We have, we have Go Teen Writers Write Your Novel with ah myself, Stephanie Morrell and Shannon Didamore. This is how to Finish Your First Draft. And then we have go Teen Writers Edit Your Novel that I wrote with Stephanie. And this is what to do when you have a first draft and you're ready to publish it. But we think you should edit it first because it's pretty good advice.
00:04:58
Paul Regnier
cool Cool visuals for the YouTube watcher. Yeah.
00:05:01
Lindsay Franklin
Yay. That's so awesome. So I think that y'all will agree with me that Jill is the perfect person to come join our table here at Quilling It and um chat about this. So we are super excited to have you. Thank you for joining us, Jill.
00:05:16
Jill Williamson
Thanks for having me.
00:05:18
Paul Regnier
Yeah. and And so speaking of that question, the listener inspired question for young writers, is there something almost like a things I wish I would have known, like when I first got started? I'm sure you get that question a lot. Is that something that you typically hear from the young writers that you've coached and in classes and and you know online and things like that? and And what are the type of things you usually tell them when you hear that kind of question?
00:05:46
Jill Williamson
Well, the very first thing that I tell them is give yourself permission to stink. Everybody, okay, so I teach fifth grade language arts to about 170 plus kids on an online school. And they're they're asking these questions too. I have a creative writing club. and But it not even the ones that are trying to be writers, but the ones who have to write me an essay.
00:06:06
Jill Williamson
They like they don't turn it in and like weeks go by and I'm like, why am I turning your essay?
00:06:08
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:06:09
Jill Williamson
I don't know what to, they're afraid they're gonna not be perfect from the first word they type. And so they're paralyzed and they do nothing.
00:06:15
Lindsay Franklin
to you.
00:06:16
Jill Williamson
And I'm like, well, that guys, that's not how it works, okay? Your first draft is, so but it's gonna be ugly on purpose and that's okay. And so just throw words on the page and have fun doing it and don't try to be perfect. um The kids in my creative writing club that are so prolific, I'm just shocked at how many words they write. They're not punctuating things correctly. they they Some of them are not even using paragraphs. They love sharing their screen because I told them to share their screen so I could try to give them a tip here and there. Like, let's practice using paragraphs. um but Let's try to learn about quotes around dialogue.
00:06:47
Jill Williamson
um You know, they're 10, but they're just writing and they're just writing words.
00:06:49
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:06:51
Jill Williamson
And the more they write, the better they're going to get over time. I mean, these these are 10 year olds and they have some of them have written multiple books. A lot of them are fan fiction, but they're just writing.
00:06:57
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:07:00
Jill Williamson
um One of my favorites is the Ninjago ah fan fiction, like Lego Ninjago, where the girl who's writing it is a love interest of, I forget which net Lego guy, but my daughter is hysteric and hysterics about it.
00:07:10
Jill Williamson
But it's just, they're just having fun. And and that's what it should be when you're a teen, you know, even if you're serious and you want to get published, you it still should be fun.
00:07:14
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:07:18
Jill Williamson
And you shouldn't,
00:07:18
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:07:20
Jill Williamson
no Even an adult, we don't want to box ourselves in and say we have to be perfect.
00:07:23
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:07:24
Jill Williamson
Nobody's perfect from those first words. you you It's not supposed to be that way. You you make a draft. Because what here's what happened to me. I started writing my story about a spy kid, and I thought it was amazing, and I was going to make a million dollars. um I was having so much fun. I was obsessed with my story. I could, and I did have but build this world that was massive and it was all in my brain. But what I didn't know how to do was get the story that I could visually see in my imagination onto the page. Like I didn't know how to do that. I thought I did. And blah, blah, blah, blah. But I,
00:07:55
Jill Williamson
But I'd only written half of it. And I kept going back to the beginning and trying to make that beginning perfect and thinking, I probably am not starting in the right place. I'm probably doing it wrong. I probably should revise it again.
00:08:06
Jill Williamson
Oh, I let three people read it. And they said these things, I have to change everything they said and make it the way they said. And so I got stuck rewriting like chapters one through three, like 800 times. And I never got to the end.
00:08:18
Jill Williamson
And finally, it took me three years to get to the end.
00:08:18
Lindsay Franklin
you
00:08:21
Jill Williamson
um And then I was like, oh, I don't, I'm not starting in the right place, right? but you You learn things when you get to the end.
00:08:26
Paul Regnier
So, mm-hmm.
00:08:28
Jill Williamson
So you have to just give yourself permission to not be perfect.
00:08:28
Paul Regnier
no
00:08:31
Jill Williamson
Just try to get the story out there. See where it goes. See what you learn. and then you're going to go back and you're going to fix things. over and over. And that that part sometimes can be less fun for people. They don't necessarily like the tedious part, but that's part of being a writer too.
00:08:44
Jill Williamson
It's not all the fun. It's sometimes hard work. um But if you can give yourself permission to not be perfect, that will hopefully alleviate a lot of the stress that you're and feeling like you're doing it wrong and, oh, this will never work for me. um So many kids think, oh, I'll never succeed because I read this and it's not good. um But nobody's good at everything they try
The Practice of Writing
00:09:07
Jill Williamson
the first time.
00:09:07
Jill Williamson
Like if I said, I wanna learn to play the piano and I have a good ear for music and I sit down and I can sound out Mary had a little lamb. I think i'm that's pretty cool. But if I start to read the music and practice and I'm not good at it, that doesn't mean I should quit on day one, I gotta practice, right?
00:09:21
Jill Williamson
And so I don't know why people seem to think that writing should just be natural and you shouldn't have to practice. Cause everything that people can get good at requires practice to get better.
00:09:32
Jill Williamson
And so writing is no different.
00:09:33
Paul Regnier
No,
00:09:33
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:09:34
Jill Williamson
The more words you write, the better you're going to get. um So yeah, that's, that's, that's kind of a lot, but it's all wrapped up in that, in that kind of, at that kind of attitude of, of just enjoy yourself and know that you're not going to be perfect.
00:09:42
Paul Regnier
no that's great.
00:09:50
Jill Williamson
You're going to practice and it's going to get better and you're going to revise and you're going to revise. And there's, there's so much out there to help you now.
00:09:55
Paul Regnier
And I've,
00:09:57
Paul Regnier
Just to dovetail off what you said, I've heard from multiple authors that they were trying so hard to like write these perfect books and like, oh, I need to do this, i need to do that. And then they got to a point where they just started writing like, you know what, I'm just going to relax and have fun and enjoy this story. And they write a story. And then that's the one that ends up like breaking through to a publisher or whatever because they didn't have all those you know invisible judges looking over their shoulders and critiquing it.
00:10:28
Paul Regnier
They just wrote they kind of like their heart story or or just something that flowed natural from them and from their creativity that gave them their unique thing that people were like, oh, this is really cool.
00:10:35
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:10:42
Paul Regnier
like We need to edit it, but it's got a great foundation and let's work with this. So there's something to that too. Just not being afraid to just kind of enjoy the process.
00:10:52
Jill Williamson
Absolutely. I put down my first one after three years and wrote some other things. And it was my sixth one was was what I called Blood Voices, which became By Darkness mis Head, my first one I sold. So I sold my sixth book. And then I said it was a trilogy, even though I didn't know because it sounded good. So then I had to write book two and book three for the publisher, which was a unique experience. But after that, um I was able to get an agent and I had book five, which was the book called Replication. And that book was in pretty good shape and I was able to sell it. But when I went back to book one and I said to my publisher, will you please publish book one, my my baby, my spy kid? um I read it and it was horrible. Yeah.
00:11:36
Jill Williamson
but I couldn't see that it was horrible way back then.
00:11:37
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:11:38
Jill Williamson
i needed that experience of of working with my editor, of learning the things that my editor taught me, even my proofreaders taught me. As I was going through that process, i I grew so much.
00:11:48
Jill Williamson
I was able to open that first book up and see it and know exactly what was wrong. And I, know, I'd spent three, even more than three years because I wrote other books, but I was still going back to that baby and pitching it at conferences.
00:12:00
Jill Williamson
I couldn't see what was wrong with it until I had those extra years of experience on a different book that I wasn't so close to. And what it needed was and for this one was
Handling Early Writing and Criticism
00:12:09
Jill Williamson
to be written in first person.
00:12:10
Jill Williamson
I found his voice and he was sarcastic and funny and it just changed everything. But, but I would never have known that had I not written all those other books. Because you learn something new on every different book.
00:12:18
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:12:20
Jill Williamson
And sometimes you just need to put that one in the drawer for a while and pull out, write something fresh. And and it's freeing.
00:12:26
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:12:27
Lindsay Franklin
Absolutely. There are so many nuggets of wisdom in this answer that we could pull out and probably have a whole episode on like all of these, each each of these nuggets.
00:12:33
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:12:37
Lindsay Franklin
But one thing that I'm like, I'm taking away from this that is advice that I give to writers who are, because there's young writers and then there's also writers who are young in their career.
00:12:49
Lindsay Franklin
And sometimes they are chronologically young as well. And that is sort of specifically what we're speaking to today, but there is so much overlap in the advice to just writers who are young in their journey as well.
00:13:01
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:13:01
Lindsay Franklin
And something that I say, all the time is don't be afraid to put that first book, which often is the heart story, you know, the reason that that we got into writing in the first place or wanting to be in publishing, don't be afraid to set that aside and work on something different.
00:13:19
Lindsay Franklin
And the the reason i give that advice is because of exactly what you're talking about, Jill, where the more experience that you get and the more that you do it and keep doing it at your current skill set that's the thing too is revising is almost like a not almost it literally is a separate skill set um with overlap of course but it's a separate skill set from creating something fresh and so these things develop kind of at the same time, I feel, but they are distinct.
00:13:40
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:13:50
Lindsay Franklin
And so sometimes in that early season of our journey, we're soaking up all this craft knowledge and different things. And so oftentimes what we need to do is just put a pin in that first project and write something completely fresh with the skills that we have currently now, because the skills that we had five years ago,
00:14:09
Lindsay Franklin
should be, you know, like a little bit lower, maybe on the the scale than what we're doing currently, because we've learned a bunch. And so this thing that we're writing Now, the fresh draft, the new idea, um it's going to probably be in better shape than this story. Now, that's not to say you don't go back to that original story, especially if it is a heart story. Yeah, you go back to that after the skill set is has built up and you can actually see what needs to be fixed. what In my case, my our journeys are are quite parallel in a lot of ways, um Jill. but In my case, I went back to that original story that got me agented but got rejected everywhere with publishers. And I kind of scrapped the whole idea, but I pulled characters out of it, characters that I really loved. And I i dropped them into the Rivenly sphere, with which was a completely new, different idea. But I got to
00:15:01
Lindsay Franklin
save what I felt was the best part of that that original you know heart story that I wrote and it was the characters. I think that's what my agent signed me on. She connected with the characters, she loved them. and It was like, you know yes, i see i see the potential that you have here and and that was why in in my opinion at least. I should ask her sometime, what was it? Because man, my craft was not there. Why did you sign me? But anyways. um So, you know, that it's not to say that we don't go back to that original project. I feel like we often do, but sometimes we just need to put a pin in it and work on something fresh. What is the next idea?
00:15:38
Lindsay Franklin
so i love that.
00:15:43
Paul Regnier
you know Another thing I was thinking, ah Jill, is since you've probably talked, you's you spoke with a lot of young writers, and I'm sure you've probably heard um some of the most common mistakes or read some of the common mistakes that young writers can make.
00:15:44
Jill Williamson
Thank you.
00:16:01
Paul Regnier
Um, and probably things you've seen over and over. Um, what are, and I think if you were to share those now, maybe it would help people avoid making those same mistakes. Or when I say that, do, do anything, does anything come to your mind? Like, oh yeah, this is something I see young writers do a lot that I would love to like help them avoid.
00:16:22
Jill Williamson
Um, well, there's, there's like, you're, you're,
00:16:23
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:16:26
Jill Williamson
but I hate to say don't do this because I i don't want to stifle anyone. But um like there's and and there's like two ways to answer this.
00:16:31
Paul Regnier
Hmm. Hmm.
00:16:35
Jill Williamson
There's like craft things and then there's like big story things. And so I mean, and and honestly, I tell my fifth graders all the time, right? Fan fiction. No, you can't publish it, but you can practice on it.
00:16:46
Jill Williamson
And it and it and if you feel so so like stuck in, I don't know where these characters are, you know, you're stuck on the world building piece. You can use characters that, you know, from a show and in practice plotting, right?
00:16:57
Jill Williamson
Or you could build your own world and put them in it and that kind of thing. um but But you can't publish it. So i sometimes i care a student will say, I've written this, you know, this stranger thing story and I want to publish it.
00:17:04
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:17:09
Jill Williamson
Well, you you can't because you don't own the copyright.
00:17:10
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:17:11
Jill Williamson
um So there's that. But then there's things like, um you know, the like there's just so many things like I I'm teaching a class next week at the homeschool conference in Florida on ah tips from my editor that I've been using a lot.
00:17:27
Jill Williamson
um And those are the kinds of things that, you know, would make a good bullet list. But, but, um but again, that, you know, sometimes those rules will freeze ah a young writer.
00:17:37
Paul Regnier
Yeah,
00:17:37
Jill Williamson
And so I, I don't like to necessarily spit them out because
00:17:43
Paul Regnier
yeah i hear you.
00:17:43
Jill Williamson
I feel like it's it's more important that they're just writing the story and getting it done. And that once it's done though, and it it depends on the student, you know, how old they are, it doesn't necessarily matter.
00:17:53
Jill Williamson
I've got some fifth graders. I am so impressed with them. Sometimes I think, they using AI?
00:17:56
Lindsay Franklin
um
00:17:57
Jill Williamson
But they're not. And, you know, and I can usually recognize AI. I'm like, that's AI, but they're not. They're, you know, and they're 10. And, you know, then yeah I didn't start writing until I was like 27. And some of them are better than I was. So that's just... um
00:18:13
Paul Regnier
Wait, I've got an idea. i bet to avoid a lot of those common mistakes, buy a book called Go Teen Writers and learn all about the rules, the helpful tips.
00:18:15
Jill Williamson
Okay.
00:18:19
Jill Williamson
Oh.
00:18:25
Jill Williamson
Well, i yeah, there's there's so many of those kinds of things. that when you're ready to revise and go back through, you can look at like, like action should happen before reaction, you know, silly things like that, that you don't really think about like the logical order of things. And i have a lot of lot of times I see, and i'm I'm just reading through replication again, because I'm going to have an audio book made.
00:18:50
Jill Williamson
And that was, like I said, the fifth book I wrote, and it was published after. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is filled with all those things. And it got edited by Zondervan people. And I'm like, how did this get, And I'm fixing it like all these years later because I can't help it.
00:19:02
Lindsay Franklin
I loved that story, by the way. love that story.
00:19:04
Jill Williamson
Oh, it's so cute. but But one of the things that bugs me now all these years later is like when a character will say dialogue and then they'll go, she raised her eyebrow.
00:19:14
Jill Williamson
And maybe that is what happened. Maybe they say it and then they go, hurt but usually the action comes before they say the words. It just flows naturally. And that's something that I just didn't know back then.
00:19:21
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:19:23
Jill Williamson
And these are things that you'll get.
00:19:23
Paul Regnier
then
00:19:24
Jill Williamson
you know, you'll start to get used to the more you're right, you'll find your way of doing things. That doesn't mean that one of you might do it differently. um So I don't know, I feel like, paul I feel like, I don't know, I don't want to say a specific thing, because I don't want to stifle anyone and say, this is the wrong way.
00:19:35
Lindsay Franklin
Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:19:40
Paul Regnier
No, but your your answer is almost your answer is almost an answer in itself that like, just just enjoy the process and don't get bogged down with all the rules initially, just write and get that practice in.
00:19:45
Jill Williamson
Trust your gut and write your story. Right.
00:19:53
Jill Williamson
right
00:19:54
Paul Regnier
So I think that that in itself is good advice, yeah.
00:19:58
Jill Williamson
I will say that sometimes you can point of view is a, is a hard one. So if somebody is struggling with point of view, that's the one that you kind of want to try to learn. Um, says the woman who's trying to write an omniscient story after all these years, which is really hard to do.
00:20:13
Jill Williamson
Um, one of my favorite books is the Vanderbeekers of 141st street.
00:20:13
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:20:17
Jill Williamson
It's a middle grade, uh, contemporary story, um, that I adore. I read it to my fifth graders and it's technically omniscient, but she's really good at it. So, uh, She'll move from one sibling to the next.
00:20:29
Jill Williamson
And it's almost like there's a narrator, but they're invisible. And so anyway, all that to say, um it's helpful if you if you're writing with one character and you try to stay in their head at a time and until you get better at it.
00:20:40
Paul Regnier
m
00:20:41
Jill Williamson
Most people are doing that, though. Most students, when I read their stuff, they're not trying to write omniscient. And maybe that's because the books they love are not written that way.
00:20:49
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:20:49
Jill Williamson
um But that's that's one that can get you started on the wrong wrong put foot sometimes. I don't know. Again, i said I wasn't going to do it and then i said something.
00:20:59
Paul Regnier
ah
00:20:59
Lindsay Franklin
That actually, that really makes sense though, because I feel like we we three are probably part of that transitional ah generation. where we, the books that we grew up reading, a lot more of those would have been written in omniscient because that was more of the style in in decades past.
00:21:14
Paul Regnier
i
00:21:16
Lindsay Franklin
But these kids growing up now and these teens and young adults growing up now, a lot of what they've been reading, and of course they'll they'll read back into those, you know, great books from yesteryear as well, but a lot of the the more recent releases that they are reading written by people of our generation, that's all going to be more of that deep POV stuff because that has been the the trend or the standard um in publishing for you know decades now at this point, probably what, 30 years, 40 years, something like that, maybe even more than that, 50, a long time.
00:21:49
Jill Williamson
Yeah.
00:21:49
Lindsay Franklin
So they would have grown up reading a lot more of that.
00:21:53
Lindsay Franklin
So that really does makes sense to me um that you're seeing that, that they kind of have a natural sense for what that sounds like. Whereas for for us, for a lot of us, that was a really weird transition to kind of move out of that very narrator heavy style of um a voice or ah point of view um in in our stories.
00:22:14
Lindsay Franklin
So that's cool. And one thing I wanted to touch on, it's, I think, great advice to young writers to have them write fan fiction. to practice. And the reason for that, for the sake of our listeners, is that you're removing those elements like world building and character development, all that.
00:22:34
Lindsay Franklin
In fan fiction, all of that is coming ready packaged for you. And it gives you, because somebody else did that work, right? And so it gives you the opportunity to really just focus on story.
00:22:45
Lindsay Franklin
on the story that you want to tell in that world with those characters that are already kind of pre-packaged for you. And so it's allowing you to focus on growing that piece of craft, um that piece of, you know, story, development story knowledge um or author knowledge. um It's like one one section at a time because you can definitely get lost in the sauce when it comes to world building and the characters and all. there's a lot There's a lot to learn and a lot of different toolboxes and skills to develop. And so I love that advice to write fan fiction for for a while, practice on that, have fun with that and get a sense for what makes a really good, compelling story without having to think about
00:23:29
Lindsay Franklin
world building and um you know creating three-dimensional characters straight off the bat while you are also trying to learn how to plot a story and how to you know uh create tension and just all of those elements that have to do more with plot and structure so awesome advice
00:23:45
Jill Williamson
Absolutely. And you never know, we we've all heard some stories of of famous novelists who started with fan fiction, and then you they revised it and made it their own. Cassandra Clare is the first one that comes to mind.
00:23:56
Jill Williamson
Hers was Twilight fan fiction for her City of Angels, I think is the series. um And so she turned them from vampires to angels and made her book work and made bazillions of dollars. So it can happen to your story that turned it out as fan fiction.
00:24:06
Lindsay Franklin
Yep. Yep. I think
00:24:10
Jill Williamson
You never know.
Exploring Writing Techniques and Publishing Paths
00:24:11
Paul Regnier
That's cool.
00:24:11
Lindsay Franklin
it's true. I think isn't Kathy Tyers, didn't some of her ah Firebird started as Star Wars fan fiction or initially, I believe. And then it you know was revised and and whatnot.
00:24:22
Lindsay Franklin
And of course you she wrote actual like,
00:24:23
Jill Williamson
That makes sense. She wrote a Star Wars novel.
00:24:24
Paul Regnier
that's cool
00:24:25
Jill Williamson
Yeah.
00:24:25
Lindsay Franklin
Brandon Star Wars stuff. um But yeah, I'm pretty sure that that's true as well. So absolutely, you can take those ideas and they can be revised and sort of retooled it so that you're not any longer taking somebody else's IP. It it becomes your own thing. But that's that's where those really well done, successful, famous actually um series, they started as fan fix. So very cool.
00:24:50
Jill Williamson
And you can also use things that are in the public domain.
00:24:50
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:24:52
Jill Williamson
You can look up books that are in the public domain and find web websites with just really long lists. um And you can write any of those and do anything you want with any of those characters. um So those are all open game.
00:25:05
Jill Williamson
Fairy tales, Jane Austen. Poor Jane Austen. I wonder what she would think of her Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But oh but yeah you can.
00:25:13
Paul Regnier
ah
00:25:15
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:25:15
Jill Williamson
That's the law. So you can play with those as long as they're in the public domain. And then those are ones that you could sell.
00:25:22
Paul Regnier
you know I was thinking of another thing um when I'm sure you've you've had young writers come up to you as well and say like, hey, you know I finished my first book or or I finished you know my second or third and this feels like the one that I really want to make happen.
00:25:37
Paul Regnier
um What do I do? Do I build a website? do i Do I try to get an agent? You know, they're at that sort of that stage where the book is done and they kind of want to move on to like building maybe their platform or trying to submit to agents and so forth. What is there any resources or things you advise them at that point, like what they should do?
00:25:59
Jill Williamson
um It depends on the person. Some people are naturally great at social media. And so if you can start building yourself a fan base on social media, go for it. It's not going to hurt you.
00:26:10
Jill Williamson
um But if you want to be published, ah you have to decide, do you want to be published by a publisher who pays you or do you want to indie publish and be in charge of your own career? Those are two perfectly great choices.
00:26:22
Jill Williamson
You can decide which one. You can do both, honestly. But if you want to be traditionally published by a publisher who pays you,
00:26:24
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:26:29
Jill Williamson
there are things that you're going to want to do. you're you And frankly, the the best thing to do is find good writers conferences, in my opinion.
00:26:37
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:26:37
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:26:37
Jill Williamson
There's little writers conferences everywhere that are lovely and good too. But if you're ready, if you think you're ready, honestly, you should go to a little one first and then you'll learn so much and you'll be like, am I ready or not?
00:26:48
Jill Williamson
You'll you'll start to, you'll start to understand if you're ready, but ah yeah.
00:26:51
Paul Regnier
Baby steps.
00:26:52
Jill Williamson
And they're, and they can be expensive, which is why I say sometimes if you can find a small one, just to dip your toe in and see what it's like.
00:26:52
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:26:58
Jill Williamson
But once you're ready, that's, that's what I did. had, I saved up for a pretty expensive one. It was 600 and some dollars. It was over like four days. And I went and I met agents and editors and I was able to pitch to them and learn that my book was not ready.
00:27:12
Jill Williamson
um And the next time I went, um they they i they they accepted the, they said, send me your first three chapters and that sort of thing. And that that gets you a ahead of, you know, cause you'll go on the websites and they'll say, we don't accept any unsolicited as ah submissions.
00:27:27
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:27:27
Jill Williamson
And that just means, you can't send us stuff unless you have an agent and the agency websites will say the same thing. And you can't ah pitch to us if you're not published already. And you'll be like, well, what do I do? in The writers conference is your answer. And so writers conferences are great to start to meet other people and network and, and kind of learn and be able to pitch.
00:27:47
Jill Williamson
Now I do know friends that pitched on places like Twitter, which don't even know are people still on Twitter. Yeah.
00:27:53
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:27:53
Jill Williamson
So i'm I'm out of the loop in that area. I don't know. But I do know that some people still do. Like their agencies will, they might be on threads now. They might be on ah even Substack. I don't know.
00:28:03
Jill Williamson
But you could, one thing that I recommend is go to like, if you can go to an actual either library or bookstore, Barnes and Noble, walk around in and the section where you think your book would be put on the shelf and look at the other books that are there.
00:28:17
Jill Williamson
Look on the spine and see who published them.
00:28:17
Paul Regnier
Mmm. Mmm. Good.
00:28:20
Jill Williamson
Make a list.
00:28:21
Paul Regnier
good
00:28:21
Jill Williamson
These are the publishers who publish books in my genre, right? Make a list of them and then go to the library ah or buy a copy.
00:28:25
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:28:29
Jill Williamson
It's pretty expensive. The Writer's Digest Market book. It's like... it you know, it's like five inches thick, it's huge. And it can you can look through it and find out where the where these publishing houses are located and what kinds of stuff and they'll have their submission guidelines on there and you can learn about them. And then you can try to figure out, oh, I want to meet somebody from this agency or this publishing house. And you can try to figure out where they might be and where they might go. And that will help you have some direction because it's It's a gigantic market out there. And you might go to a writer's conference and all they have is somebody who's looking to publish nonfiction and you wrote fiction or somebody that's looking to publish romance and you're writing, you know, middle grade fantasy. And so they are not going to look at your stuff. They might give you advice, but they're not going to be the people that could help you get published. And so you have to do some research and do your homework and find out where people are and what people might be able to be a good friend.
00:29:21
Jill Williamson
to get to know. um And authors can help you too. So you might go to a conference and meet other authors and ask them questions. What did they do? Who do they know?
00:29:29
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:29:29
Jill Williamson
And they might be able to advise you too. So you kind of got to stick your toe into the publishing world and start getting to know people and networking and, and It takes sometimes a few years. um
00:29:39
Lindsay Franklin
Thank you.
00:29:40
Jill Williamson
It just does. it's It's slow, but you can keep writing in the meantime and you can make your social media channel and hold books up and grow your fans or whatever, do your best to try to grow a following. um Some people will publish their stories um on their websites or on, like, I wrote a book on my blog before. I wrote a book on my, I wrote several books on my patron. and Paul's writing a book on his sub stack right now, one chapter a week.
00:30:06
Jill Williamson
And so you could do that and get fans that way that,
00:30:09
Paul Regnier
It's actually finished.
00:30:10
Jill Williamson
Oh, good job. Yeah, no, it's a great way to get a book done because you have a deadline and you might, you ah I might have only had six people reading it, but I was very dedicated to those six people and I didn't want to let them down.
00:30:11
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:30:19
Jill Williamson
And so it was a great external motivator to keep me writing. um there There is a caution there though, if you publish it on your site like that, a publisher might not want to to buy it.
00:30:29
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:30:29
Jill Williamson
um So that just depends on the publisher, but that doesn't mean you couldn't indie publish it. um So there's lots of things you can do, um but writers conferences are are my top advice.
00:30:35
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:30:41
Paul Regnier
Cool.
00:30:41
Lindsay Franklin
That is really, really good advice. And another another place to find agent names, because sometimes that can be a little bit harder, um finding an agent who represents what you write and and might be a good fit for you to submit to um if you're going the traditional route.
00:30:48
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:30:58
Lindsay Franklin
Aside from all of the online resources and and all of that, check the acknowledgments of your favorite books that are in your genre, because authors often think they're agents there.
00:31:08
Lindsay Franklin
And so if you have this like favorite that that just recently came out, you can go to the back and see, does this author mention their agent? Yep. There's the name. You can search that agent and then go directly to their website because the online resources are great for kind of filtering and seeing what agents are open and all those things, but it can be really overwhelming because there are thousands.
00:31:31
Lindsay Franklin
at least hundreds, probably thousands of literary agents out there just in the US, you know, working with US publishers. So it can be a lot to wade through. That's a little trick or a hack to maybe kind of zero in on somebody who's who's definitely publishing books in the space that you want to be published in. So.
00:31:49
Jill Williamson
And not all agents are good agents. um
00:31:53
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:31:53
Jill Williamson
And so you might go to that website and find out, wow, this lady works for this agency and they have 12 agents and she's not accepting any submissions, but this other person at her agency is. And so that's, that's a good sign because you've got somebody in this reputable place. um No agent should ask you for money and things like that. So, so, you know, do your homework for sure.
00:32:16
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, absolutely. So there was another one of those little wisdom nuggets in Jill's original answer that I wanted to pull out and discuss with you guys and see what you think
Developing Resilience as a Writer
00:32:31
Lindsay Franklin
about it. I i think sometimes we get a little bit confused about, or not confused, but just don't appreciate the distinction sometimes between talent and craft or practice. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about that, because I think that can be really confusing to young writers and people who are new in their author journey, where you are born with some degree of talent. So So I've had a number of questions kind of about this recently that sort of fall under this umbrella from young writers, things about, well, I thought I was i thought i was good.
00:33:08
Lindsay Franklin
And then I started to, you know, kind of dip my toe into becoming a professional writer.
00:33:09
Paul Regnier
Mm. Mm.
00:33:13
Lindsay Franklin
And now I feel like I know nothing. How do I ever know? When is it going to be good enough? You know, those kinds of things where I think a lot of us grow up always having been writers or storytellers.
00:33:18
Paul Regnier
Mm.
00:33:24
Lindsay Franklin
We we have that in us. That's so how we end up or why we end up in this field. And then once you start kind of trying to do it professionally, then it's like, oh no, i know nothing.
00:33:34
Lindsay Franklin
Uh-oh. And I think that distinction is because there's there is a difference between talent and that kind of inborn ability to tell a story that maybe a lot of people don't even have the desire, right, to ever...
00:33:49
Lindsay Franklin
sit down and do that. And that's that little, that little spark that maybe when you are a kid, maybe when you are one of Jill's fifth graders, it's like, wow, you have, you know, you've got that something, wow, there's something there.
00:33:57
Jill Williamson
Yeah.
00:34:00
Lindsay Franklin
That's that inborn piece. But for literally every single one of us, no matter what talent you're born with or without, we all have to study we all have to learn we have to learn the craft we have to learn the industry and there's that like sharpening or polishing of that natural you know it's like a raw diamond that's what talent is in my opinion and jill you like touched on this this is the same with music it's the same with any art where you might have that natural ear for it or that that ability there but that's always going to be a raw diamond that needs to be
00:34:36
Lindsay Franklin
polished, it needs to be worked on. and so so That's very normal for all of the young writers out there who are like, I thought I could do this. All my teachers always told me that I was a good storyteller, I was a great writer, and and now I'm realizing terrible.
00:34:47
Lindsay Franklin
No, you're not. You're just like working on, it's like the first stage of the polishing. That's normal. That's expected. right i mean I'm assuming that you two also had this experience. is It's not just me, I hope.
00:34:58
Jill Williamson
For sure.
00:34:59
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:34:59
Jill Williamson
and
00:35:00
Paul Regnier
it's like ah It's like the small town quarterback star that moves to the big city. And then he's like, oh, everyone's good here. Uh-oh.
00:35:07
Lindsay Franklin
Uh-oh. Mm-hmm.
00:35:08
Jill Williamson
And it's sometimes painful to get that first layer off because, you know, you have to, you, you, you know, especially if you were the, the, the star writer in your school and your teachers praised you and everybody was like amazed and all this kind of thing. And then you're now you're in a pool and Now you're like getting cri critiques for the first time and it's going be painful. um I cried over my first several books as rounds of edits when I would get them. I'd be like, oh no, I'm terrible. And then, but there was also the piece of, this is going to be so much to work. That also made me cry. um But now I really do. I want people to rip it to shreds. I'm a little, maybe a little bit unhealthy in that department, but like, please find the mistakes. Yeah.
00:35:49
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:35:50
Jill Williamson
ah because I know it's going to make it better. And I know i need that help. um Writing can be, is a very solitary endeavor, but we really do need others to help us make it shine because we get so close to us, we can't see things. And so we need that practice. But there's always going to be the self-doubt too, whereas I'm still not good enough. I still think that all the time.
00:36:12
Jill Williamson
And and i've been I have 35 books and I've been writing for years and I'm still like, oh, this one's terrible. And I remember Robin Lee Hatcher said this. She's like, every book she has published and she's at 100 books as of as of the Idaho conference.
00:36:23
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:36:24
Jill Williamson
She said, every book that she publishes is gonna be the one that kills her career. And she just knows it's gonna be the worst one ever. And so you recognize the the the negative mindset in yourself and and kind of learn to learn to silence that because that's human nature trying to tell you that you're not good enough and all that kind of thing.
00:36:40
Jill Williamson
And just chase chase your dream and respect it enough to put in the hard work and to recognize that you will need to work and improve. and practice and that there will be mistakes and like, oh, I misspelled that again.
00:36:55
Jill Williamson
Everybody has their own quirks, like things that they do. When I first started out, my editor pointed out that I did this thing called the triplet, he called it, which was to say three things in a row with commas, like she did this, she did this, and then she did this.
00:37:02
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:37:08
Jill Williamson
And I would have like five sentences in a row that had that same structure. I didn't even even see it. And and I learned like, oh, i got to watch for that. And I learned to vary my sentences and stuff that I just hadn't, nobody had pointed out to me because I was writing by myself for myself.
00:37:23
Jill Williamson
And so it helps to have different people, skilled people, not just your friends and your your family read it, but it helps to have those people read it and give you feedback. So just be ready with your thick skin. Sometimes it helps to say, this is what I'm looking for only But to practice getting that feedback, because critique critiques can be hard to receive sometimes.
00:37:40
Paul Regnier
That's
00:37:45
Jill Williamson
um But it's part of it.
00:37:50
Paul Regnier
that's good
00:37:50
Lindsay Franklin
it is it's an ongoing yeah yeah yep yep that's exactly what was gonna say the critiques and like the rejection it's an ongoing part of it it never really stops and you know you think once you're done submitting you know those that first round of submissions to agents or you know publishers or whatever once you're done with that oh the rejection stops no it doesn't it keeps going forever it's just part of our it's part of our industry it's part of putting your work out there because once it's out there then the readers will reject it by giving you like bad reviews or just not buying it not being interested in it like we we have to figure out how to deal with that if this is something that we really want to do we feel called to do this is an important part of our lives then we have to to manage that and that can be um
00:37:51
Jill Williamson
And you're going to keep getting them. Yeah, you're going to get. Oh, yeah.
00:38:00
Jill Williamson
it
00:38:13
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:38:34
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:38:39
Lindsay Franklin
a difficult thing to learn how to do. It's one of the most difficult things for me personally in this industry is figuring out how do I deal with this and not let it crush me? That just kind of the constant
00:38:49
Paul Regnier
Amen.
00:38:51
Lindsay Franklin
rejection or criticism or negativity that comes with putting a piece of art out into the world for, you know, broad consumption. And of course we want our art, we want our, our books or our movies or whatever it is that we're writing to reach as many people as possible. We want to share it with as many people as possible. And with that, the wider, the net that you cast, the, the more people who are going to be in that net, who that story is just not for them.
00:39:18
Lindsay Franklin
and that's okay it really is it is okay because no story is for everybody and so this is i've maybe confessed to this before on the podcast i honestly can't remember i know i've confessed publicly before But something that I do when I'm really in my head about this is I will go on to the Goodreads reviews of some of my favorite books, books that I personally love, books written by my friends who I look at their careers and go, oh, man, I wish I had that career.
00:39:20
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:39:47
Lindsay Franklin
You know, um my favorites from childhood, my current favorites, the books that I love. OK, authors I admire. And I go to their Goodreads reviews and I will read their one stars.
00:39:57
Lindsay Franklin
And i will remind myself that these authors, like I've been in this industry for 16 years as a professional and I know good craft. I, you know, I've seen a lot out there.
00:40:09
Lindsay Franklin
And so these, these books that are my favorites, like ah objectively, these are well-written books, right? Like craft wise, they are well-written books and still these will get scathing one-star reviews because that book was just not for that reader.
00:40:20
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:40:23
Lindsay Franklin
And that really is okay. That does not mean that author did anything wrong. That does not mean that piece of art is not worthy. Like, what does that mean? Because that piece of art touched me.
00:40:34
Lindsay Franklin
So I know for a fact that that author did what they set out to do. They reached somebody who that story was for. And so that that's one of my little like imposter syndrome tricks that I do where to remind myself that it there is no perfect book and it it doesn't matter how, you know, good you are or how well you accomplish the thing you set out to do.
00:40:55
Lindsay Franklin
There's always going to be somebody who just like, doesn't get it or doesn't like it. And so we we have to learn how to deal with that. So I will remind myself, okay, even Jill Williamson gets one star reviews occasionally.
00:41:06
Paul Regnier
ah
00:41:06
Lindsay Franklin
This is okay that I got my one star review. you know i will never doubt, never doubt.
00:41:09
Paul Regnier
No, and not Jill. Jill never gets one star.
00:41:12
Lindsay Franklin
No, that's the Lindsay Franklin gets one star reviews.
00:41:14
Jill Williamson
i want I want to add for the one star reviews though, another one of my tricks is to to remember that when I shop for books, I will often the first thing I do is go read the one star reviews.
00:41:14
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:41:25
Paul Regnier
Huh.
00:41:25
Jill Williamson
I want to know what people are complaining about this book. And if I see certain things, I'll be like, okay, that's not for me.
00:41:28
Lindsay Franklin
Oh.
00:41:30
Jill Williamson
Like one of the things is spice. If I find somebody who reviewed and said this book was too much spice for me, i'm like, oh, perfect.
00:41:32
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:41:35
Jill Williamson
I needed to know that. I don't want a book with that. you So it helps me weed out what I want. And so I appreciate the one-star reviews. It took some time to learn to appreciate them. um And I don't read them anymore because I don't need to torture myself.
00:41:47
Jill Williamson
But I do recognize that, you know, they help me as a shopper find books that I want. And so they're going to help somebody else keep from reading my book and then giving it a one-star review. Hopefully there's enough there.
00:41:57
Lindsay Franklin
That's the thing, right?
00:41:58
Jill Williamson
Yeah.
00:41:59
Lindsay Franklin
that's That is, it's actually a gift. And again, it is very difficult to, but the point in the beginning, it's a process for most of us, I think, to kind of get there with this mentally, but it is actually a gift because you don't want that other reader.
00:42:03
Jill Williamson
Yes.
00:42:13
Lindsay Franklin
So somebody found the book and and tried it and it wasn't for them. If there is another reader out there who has that exact same kind of taste profile or preferences when it comes to content or whatever it is, or tropes that they hate, whatever, you actually don't want that reader to buy your book and then hate it, right? So it's actually a gift when somebody writes a really good one-star review that's not just mean, but kind of like says, this is what i this is I did not care for. This is why this did not hit for me because it is helping other readers out there who have that same taste profile because it is subjective.
00:42:47
Lindsay Franklin
And they're going to look at that and say, oh, no, that's right. I don't like to read Spice either. So I know this one is not for me. I'm not going to purchase it and then put that author on blast and, you know, a month after I've i've finished it. um So it is it's a gift. It's just it can be hard to see it that way at first.
00:43:04
Paul Regnier
Yeah, i was I was telling Lindsay the story of, um I knew this person who had, you know, she'd she'd been a big reader, but then she just started getting into fantasy. And she's saying, oh, I really like fantasy. I'm like, oh, man, I love fantasy. Are you kidding? And ah a book that was really like meaningful to me early on was The Hobbit.
00:43:24
Paul Regnier
And so I'm like, oh, you got to read The Hobbit. And this was before the movie and all that stuff. um So I'm like, oh, you got to read The Hobbit. It's the greatest. And she goes, oh, I tried It was boring. And I'm like, what? What do you talking? But I always think of that because even Tolkien can't please everybody.
00:43:42
Paul Regnier
Right? And if he can't please everybody, then we certainly shouldn't expect our books to be you know immune from negative comments or whatever, people that just didn't get it or it didn't resonate with them.
00:43:44
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:43:55
Paul Regnier
So sometimes I think of that and I'm like, oh yeah, okay. I'm i'm with Tolkien. That's good. We're in good company.
00:44:02
Lindsay Franklin
We're in good company.
00:44:04
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:44:07
Lindsay Franklin
That's so good. Okay, so I know I'm checking
Publishing Early: Pros and Cons
00:44:10
Jill Williamson
Thank you.
00:44:10
Lindsay Franklin
time.
00:44:10
Lindsay Franklin
I'm like, I feel like we could probably talk for three hours about all the things. So I'm like, what what things on my list?
00:44:13
Paul Regnier
I know.
00:44:16
Lindsay Franklin
Should I ah should I bring up at this point?
00:44:18
Paul Regnier
We can go a little bit longer. We have Jill Williamson. We got the Jill Williamson.
00:44:21
Lindsay Franklin
Williamson, the Jill Williamson. So yes, um okay, so I'm thinking, all right, what would be your advice to young writers about Publishing early. So, okay.
00:44:34
Lindsay Franklin
So you've got, ah say you're 16 and you've been kind of in the space, doing the thing, practicing a lot. You've got a finished manuscript. It's completed. um Your mom loves it And, you know, or your writer's group loves it, whatever it is. And what are, what would be your advice about moving forward with publishing that or waiting?
00:44:58
Lindsay Franklin
i know my answer to this question.
00:45:01
Jill Williamson
um You know what? I used to be very much like, don't do it. um
00:45:05
Lindsay Franklin
All right.
00:45:06
Jill Williamson
Especially when the Kindle first came out and all of our our our our teen bloggers were like ready to publish tomorrow. But you know what? Honestly, i don't think it... it It doesn't hurt you to try it.
00:45:19
Jill Williamson
You'll learn a lot from it. um You'll probably learn that, oh, how do people find my book? Because when you think about the sheer amount of books published on Amazon, people don't just hop in upon them.
00:45:29
Paul Regnier
Amen.
00:45:30
Jill Williamson
you know It's not how it works. So I don't think it's going to hurt you. In fact, my my ah one of my authors, Nikki Florica, she is is but 21 years old. She is amazingly talented.
00:45:40
Jill Williamson
And she did this. She had published a book that she's she was embarrassed about. And she I'm talking about her. hope she doesn't mind. um She asked me if she should have a pen name because she had published this book and she pulled it down, but she was so embarrassed by this book.
00:45:47
Lindsay Franklin
but
00:45:52
Jill Williamson
And I was like, oh, and I said, I said, no, what do you need a pen name for? No, that's your story. You're going to be holding that book up someday, telling people about what you learned. And I don't know if she listened to me at all, but I know she talked to Kelly Fernlake and Kelly Fernlake gave her advice that she liked.
00:46:08
Jill Williamson
I don't know what Kelly told her, but she ended up keeping her name and I was glad. So like I talked to Kelly about it. Oh, okay, good. Anyway, but all that to say, um usually when I meet authors who have done that, young authors, there they are sometimes mortified and and embarrassed about their books. And sometimes they're not. Sometimes their books were a success and it really helped them. So nobody's story is the same. And so even even with with a story like Nikki, who was mortified and embarrassed later about her book, I She took it down.
00:46:36
Jill Williamson
There might be some copies out there, but you know what?
00:46:37
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:46:38
Jill Williamson
Robin Lee Hatcher, who has a hundred books, has some copies out there, a book she's not proud of either. Cause she originally started in the general market and she doesn't want readers to find those books. And sometimes they do. And, and it's part of her story too.
00:46:50
Jill Williamson
And so, I mean, if you're that dead set on it and some people like, um, I have ah ah yeah a man in my church who just wanted he just wanted the book in print for his family.
00:47:00
Jill Williamson
He just wanted it. He didn't want to be a career author. He just really had this story he wanted to tell me for his grandkids and he wanted to do that. So there's just it's not an easy answer for for me to to just say it has to be this way because it doesn't everybody's different and if your your heart is set on it.
00:47:10
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:47:16
Jill Williamson
go for it. The the worst that can happen is that you decide later that you don't want anyone to see it anymore and you want to pull it down and you can certainly do that. And it's, it's not the end of the world. So that's my, that's my answer.
00:47:26
Paul Regnier
I did that. I did that with my first book.
00:47:28
Jill Williamson
You did.
00:47:28
Paul Regnier
I pulled it i pulleded it down. Yeah.
00:47:31
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:47:31
Jill Williamson
he pulled it down.
00:47:32
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:47:33
Paul Regnier
but But I learned a lot trying to make it happen.
00:47:35
Lindsay Franklin
do
00:47:36
Paul Regnier
So it's like i got I got both.
00:47:37
Jill Williamson
Hmm.
00:47:38
Paul Regnier
I learned a lot and then I'm like, okay, this one wasn't quite ready for prime time. And then I took it down. So there you go.
00:47:46
Lindsay Franklin
I think this is a little bit my answer as well, that there is no one size fits all answer to this question, because some people are ready at 16 or whatever. And, and ready is a little bit of a misnomer because there can be a lot of reasons why that's, it's a good thing to do, like the learning experience. And, and it just might be part of the journey that is necessary or good for that particular person. So, um, my answer is, is pretty much the same. so one,
00:48:16
Lindsay Franklin
piece of advice that I give about this is not for young writers not to feel pressured to get something up there just because maybe some of their peers are doing that. You know, if you're in like a young writers group or like a, you know, class and kind of a thing or program, something like that, it can, there can be a lot of pressure on um on teens who are not quite like they, they don't feel ready, but they feel like they should because others are doing that or they're going to be behind if they don't. um I would say, make sure you feel you as the writer feel like, yes, this is something that I want to do. And if it ends up being a mistake, I'm okay with that. I'll pull it down. It's part of my journey. It's not really a mistake at that point. You know, like make sure you feel good about doing this thing and you're not doing it because it's something that you, you feel like you must.
00:49:05
Lindsay Franklin
um I am personally very glad that my first, you know, like if, if KDP and all of that had existed when I was first doing this, I probably would have, done that and put that book up there and I would have been, um that would have been hard for me to deal with because it was really bad.
00:49:23
Lindsay Franklin
And I know I would have been ah embarrassed, but Jill is 100% right that you you can just unpublish that. And the truth is that if you don't have a huge platform, which most of us do not, especially when we are first starting, most of us have no platform.
00:49:37
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:49:37
Lindsay Franklin
um it's not like thousands and thousands of people are going to just magically find that story and read it unless you are out there really killing it with your marketing and and whatnot which if you are i'm gonna guess that you've probably also kind of like maybe figured out how like if you're 16 and you're out there killing it and people are like finding your book on amazon just just because like i i don't know i i feel like you probably
00:50:01
Jill Williamson
Bye.
00:50:02
Lindsay Franklin
have also maybe figured out how to write the book. I don't know. That's just my my sense on that. But anyway, um yeah.
00:50:08
Jill Williamson
I had a friend who published. So I would have done this. I would have published in a heartbeat had the Kindle been invented. I started a little bit about four years early. um And i I almost was going to publish with this tiny little ebook only publisher. i was going to publish replication with them. I was all set to do it, but I got busy and it fell through. And then i was able to sell it. So you never know. But but I had a friend who did. i met her later and she published all these these cozy mysteries um that...
00:50:34
Jill Williamson
that she later hated, but she made a ton of money and her readers loved her. So while she grew in her craft and then look back on them with disdain and was embarrassed about them, the readers still liked her books, they had enjoyed them, they paid her for them, they were a series of like, you know, cozy mysteries, there were 10 and they read all of them.
00:50:51
Jill Williamson
And she she found readers and she might not have she might have told more than she showed.
00:50:52
Lindsay Franklin
Awesome.
00:50:56
Jill Williamson
She might have used too much backstory, but her readers didn't care. They liked her main character and they read her books and she made a ton of money. um And so you just... it worked for her, even though she later still felt embarrassed and she fixed them. Of course she went back in and rewrite rewrote some on there. Now they're up there still for sale, but they're revised. um Everybody's story is different. And so don't discount, like if people are enjoying your, you put your book up and you think it might not be perfect, but you're selling copies.
00:51:23
Jill Williamson
You can always revise it and keep selling copies, but readers read differently than publishers and other authors who um who are reading.
00:51:24
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:51:24
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:51:34
Jill Williamson
Now, let me let me tell you, I have to tell you this because I learned this just recently and it's it felt so da like duh that I don't know why it took me so long to learn it. but Somebody told me on social media, ah social media advice the other day, and they said, you're an author on social media, you should not be following other authors and only commenting on your other authors posts, you're going to the algorithms going to feed you more authors,
Social Media and Writing Routine
00:51:57
Jill Williamson
you should be.
00:51:57
Paul Regnier
hmm
00:51:58
Jill Williamson
to commenting on other readers and trying to get readers to follow you because you're trying to be there for readers. And, and when authors are just following other authors and we're critiquing each other stuff, what, what is that for? Why are we doing that? I don't know. I don't know why we do that. And we can compare ourselves to each other and we're like in our own little weird world of we're supposed to be connecting with readers and not to say authors aren't readers, because of course we all are.
00:52:18
Jill Williamson
ah um But but we're we're here, we're trying to write books for readers, not for each other necessarily.
00:52:22
Lindsay Franklin
It's different. Yeah.
00:52:26
Jill Williamson
And so remember that, don't don't get too caught up in what your you know your co your other author friend or you maybe one of your favorite authors is doing or said about something or whatever. um Serve your readers, figure out who your reader is and write for them.
00:52:40
Jill Williamson
And that's who it's about.
00:52:43
Paul Regnier
I feel like every any time I get like a new follower or something on social media and they're saying, like oh I'm a big reader.
00:52:43
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:52:49
Paul Regnier
I'm like, yes, I got a reader. And then a little while later, they'll say, like oh, by the way, my first book's coming out. I'm like, oh, that's another author.
00:52:56
Lindsay Franklin
it's another mother
00:52:57
Paul Regnier
Dang it. I thought I had a reader. do.
00:53:00
Lindsay Franklin
which we love our fellow authors to be clever, but, but this is really excellent advice and a really good point.
00:53:02
Paul Regnier
We do.
00:53:02
Jill Williamson
Yes, we do.
00:53:03
Paul Regnier
later
00:53:08
Lindsay Franklin
I feel like in, in our days, we were, we were all getting started, uh, roughly, roughly the same time. And Jill was a little bit ahead, um, ahead of us, but, um, Back in the day, y'all probably remember it, the advice was everybody needs to have a blog, right?
00:53:24
Paul Regnier
moon
00:53:24
Lindsay Franklin
We all knew that blogging was huge and everybody needs to guess.
00:53:25
Jill Williamson
Platform.
00:53:28
Lindsay Franklin
Everybody needs to have a blog. And what so many of us did, and this makes sense because if you're a novelist and your novel is not yet out there, you can write short pieces of fiction and that's a good way to, you know, build up your readership.
00:53:42
Lindsay Franklin
Maybe there isn't as big a market for that. There's not a lot of, you know, book readers out there going to blogs to read like microfiction, but that is one thing you can do. But most of us, if we took the advice and started a blog, we would talk about our process and we would talk about being a writer and we would talk about the industry and what we were learning and maybe we do maybe we do some book reviews and you know that sort of thing because that's what you have to talk about because at that point nobody knows your book nobody knows your world nobody cares yet you know about you talking about your book so you start talking about writing and what a lot of us accidentally did was was we built up a big following of our fellow writers because they were the ones who could really relate with what we were experiencing and so if we're writing about you know
00:54:24
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:54:29
Lindsay Franklin
this conference that we went to and all the cool things we learned and the people we met and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, other writers resonate with that. And so then you, you find that you accidentally have a following, but it's all fellow authors. And so then when the book actually does get published, it's fine, but because as authors, we all know a ton of fellow authors, it gets really difficult to kind of, um, be a reader for our fellow authors, if that makes sense.
00:54:57
Lindsay Franklin
um And so it's it's a super important thing and has been a tricky thing to navigate for like 20 years at this point, since the internet really became a thing because what do we talk about?
00:55:05
Jill Williamson
Yes.
00:55:10
Lindsay Franklin
We talk about our process, we talk about our lives. And once you have a book out there and readers become fans, they do care about that. They do they are interested. Like I can talk about things related to my process and people who are not authors,
00:55:24
Lindsay Franklin
care about that readers care about let's talk to book clubs and they're interested and how did you decide to do this and and why did you make this choice and you know they'll ask those kinds of questions but 16 years ago when i was first starting out nobody cared because nobody knew any of my worlds yet and so um it's a really tricky thing and if you can kind of unlock that magic early on in your career that will serve you really well in building your platform moving forward where yes, definitely have that author community because it's really important when in the early, not just in the early stages of your journey, all the time in your journey, it's really important to have fellow authors and to build that community of support and your friends and people who get it and understand. But we also need to have that outward facing view of trying to reach readers and it's tricky, it's tricky.
00:56:14
Paul Regnier
Yeah, where are they? Where are they hiding?
00:56:15
Lindsay Franklin
but but They're at the library and the bookstore.
00:56:19
Paul Regnier
They're at the library.
00:56:21
Lindsay Franklin
They're curled up on their couches reading books, listening to books.
00:56:23
Paul Regnier
Barnes and Noble right now.
00:56:25
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:56:25
Paul Regnier
oh
00:56:26
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:56:26
Paul Regnier
Well, Jill, I wanted to give you a chance to kind of promote some of your latest works. But before we got to that, Lindsay, was there any other questions? Did we cover all these all the questions you wanted to ask?
00:56:39
Lindsay Franklin
We could do 10 parter on with the famous Jill Williamson. So I will, since we're almost an hour, i'm just going to I will be done. I will be done now. Or maybe just ask Jill one more question.
00:56:54
Lindsay Franklin
um Oh, man.
00:56:54
Paul Regnier
Bonus question. Here it is.
00:56:56
Lindsay Franklin
Bonus question. Okay. So let's ah ask you really fast. what is What do you think is a sustainable and realistic writing routine for a young writer? What advice would you give about the the actual practical writing piece of it, like fitting that into your life and that sort of thing?
00:57:19
Jill Williamson
Oh, I would say try to write at least five days a week a little bit. And even if that's only one paragraph a day, that's one paragraph a day.
00:57:28
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:57:28
Jill Williamson
um It doesn't hurt. It's good to build a routine. um My friend Stephanie and I, we used to do a 100 for 100 day challenge where we would try to write 100 words a day for 100 days. And that was just to try to practice getting into the routine of of writing, forming a habit of writing. um However,
00:57:45
Jill Williamson
I um am a little bit addicted to work. And so I have been learning in the past five years to take a Sabbath rest day every week.
00:57:56
Jill Williamson
So I try really hard not to do any work on usually on Sunday.
00:57:58
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:58:00
Jill Williamson
ah because I find that if I do, I like to, I'm i'm addicted to work. i' lot I'm just always wanting to create more things, ah but my body needs rest and my mind needs rest.
00:58:11
Jill Williamson
And so I've learned the hard way in my life that I need to take that time. So I don't recommend writing every single day, even if it's only a paragraph. um but i But I do think five five days is is a good thing. And you know what? Even if it's hard, like you could write, you could grab your phone and put the microphone on and and talk a paragraph to yourself and text it to your email and then later copy and paste it into your manuscript. So if you're stuck somewhere random in traffic or not in traffic, you not don't text while you're driving.
00:58:41
Lindsay Franklin
It will go.
00:58:41
Jill Williamson
I don't know where you are. um But yeah, so that would be my answer um to just try to write a titsy bit every day. um And those words add up over time. um I had a teacher friend who couldn't write at all, but he wrote only on his half hour lunch every day at teensy bit and eventually wrote his first book that way.
00:58:59
Jill Williamson
And it adds up.
00:59:01
Paul Regnier
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I heard, cause I've been trying dictation lately and I found like, it's really fast. I mean, sometimes it doesn't come out accurate. So you got to go back and fix it, but it's like, and it saves your hands, you know, no more carpal tunnel if you can kind of go back and forth.
00:59:12
Jill Williamson
Yes.
00:59:15
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:59:18
Paul Regnier
Um, but I heard, I heard some writers, they go on like a hike or a walk. And then as they're going and they say like, oh, now I'm moving, I'm breathing in fresh air and it kind of helps with the creative flow.
00:59:22
Jill Williamson
Yes.
00:59:29
Paul Regnier
And then they're just speaking into their phone and using some sort of dictation app. But they they're saying they could get a lot of hundreds of words, even thousands of words like done just by taking a taking a hike and talking into their phone.
00:59:43
Paul Regnier
So, you know, there you go.
00:59:44
Jill Williamson
Yes, and even Google Docs has a voice typing button.
00:59:45
Paul Regnier
Mm hmm.
00:59:47
Jill Williamson
I love teaching it to my fifth graders, especially the ones who stare at that blank screen going, I don't know what to write. But when they can see that they can talk it and it goes, that very exciting. um But you have to go back and see what it what it actually wrote because if you don't proofread it, it might not have heard you correctly and it doesn't remember to add capital letters and you have to do that.
01:00:02
Paul Regnier
Right.
01:00:04
Paul Regnier
I know.
01:00:08
Jill Williamson
But but it's fast and so you can totally do it. It counts, it's writing, it's words.
01:00:12
Paul Regnier
That's right. Word count.
01:00:13
Lindsay Franklin
It is. I love that. And I i love i love this advice that just just a little bit, if you could just do a little bit, you know, consistently several days out of the week, then it really does all add up.
01:00:27
Lindsay Franklin
And for me, an important piece of this, because I i can really easily fall into that trap of feeling like unless I'm getting word count, then it's not, you know, doesn't it doesn't actually count unless there's words on the page.
01:00:39
Lindsay Franklin
But I've learned over the years that a big part of my process is just sitting with my story and thinking about it.
01:00:42
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
01:00:46
Lindsay Franklin
And it sounds like a weird thing to do. Like I've joked about this before, but when I was trying to write the re-stitching of Camille Duane, which released earlier this year, there was a moment where I was sitting on my floor, just like right over here in this room.
01:00:57
Jill Williamson
Good morning.
01:01:01
Lindsay Franklin
And I had blank index cards in front of me and all of my colored pens and things that I would normally use to like, try to start plotting out this story and figuring out what I'm gonna write. because I am an outliner.
01:01:13
Lindsay Franklin
And I was just kind of staring at them. And my husband walked into the room and he was like, what are you doing? i was like, I'm writing, you know, and I'm just like, blank cards. I don't even have a pen in my hand, but ah he's like, I thought you were going to work on your book, like deadlines approaching. No, I am. I am working on my book right now. I assure you, I am touching no writing implement. I'm not there. And I got up from that writing session with no words on any of those cards, but I was, it still was progress because I was sitting there thinking about it and thinking through what this story needed to be. And I just couldn't get words on the page that particular day, but
01:01:49
Lindsay Franklin
It was still progress and that's a really weird thing to kind of reframe, but it's that's real, at least for me.
01:01:54
Jill Williamson
No, it's real for me.
01:01:55
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
01:01:56
Jill Williamson
It's real for me too. I can't write when I'm stuck and I need to sit and think about it. um So you can, you can spend your time thinking your way out of your, whatever you need to think your way out of. um And you could also skip ahead and write something that you do know.
01:02:09
Jill Williamson
If you're really wanting to get words, don't don't think you have to go in order. Don't think you have to do anything. Like, I really know how this book ends. I want to write the ending scene. Go write that. Great.
01:02:19
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah,
01:02:19
Jill Williamson
um But if you have to sit there with your cards and your pens, that is good work. It really is. It might not look like it to your your family and friends, but Lindsay and I know.
01:02:26
Lindsay Franklin
I look like a crazy, person crazy person sitting there just with like nothing.
01:02:30
Paul Regnier
I was just going to say, I pictured that scene in like a science fiction or horror movie, but the light it would have to be night.
01:02:35
Jill Williamson
yeah
01:02:36
Paul Regnier
The lights would be off. Lindsay's alone sitting in the middle of the the the room, blank cards all around, eyes closed.
01:02:46
Jill Williamson
but but
01:02:47
Lindsay Franklin
I'm writing. Yeah.
01:02:48
Paul Regnier
Her husband walks in and he sees this and he just immediately 180 is like, I'm out of here.
01:02:52
Jill Williamson
So this is a kind of a funny thing, but I had, we had friends come over and I don't know why we took them into our back bedroom to show them something, maybe out the window.
01:02:59
Paul Regnier
Thank you.
01:03:00
Jill Williamson
I don't know. But but my husband's friend goes, well, that's not something you see every day. and on on the wall in our bedroom is this humongous whiteboard.
01:03:13
Jill Williamson
He's like, I've never seen anybody with a whiteboard in their bedroom. I said, well, our house is really small and I write in here. And so I got to have this massive whiteboard next to my bed. It's like, well, you know, sometimes I need to brainstorm in the middle of the night, writing it down.
01:03:25
Jill Williamson
And it just made me laugh because, yeah, why wouldn't I have a whiteboard?
01:03:28
Paul Regnier
is that ah Is that for like a storyboarding thing for your indie films or is that for actual like plot stuff?
01:03:33
Jill Williamson
The idea of the whiteboard was for storyboarding. Right now it's covered with papers for my for one of my upcoming books.
01:03:36
Paul Regnier
Okay.
01:03:39
Jill Williamson
But um anyway, Oh, you guys can probably hear my, can you hear that song?
01:03:42
Paul Regnier
Very cool. Now someone's playing a flute.
01:03:46
Jill Williamson
It's my phone alarm.
01:03:46
Lindsay Franklin
It sounds like, like, is it the Lord of the Rings music?
01:03:50
Paul Regnier
I know.
01:03:52
Jill Williamson
It's my Lord the Rings alarm. It's way over there though. So I can't, you're going to have it'll have to play us out.
01:03:56
Paul Regnier
It's cool though.
01:03:57
Lindsay Franklin
Perfect, that'll be the outro music.
01:03:57
Jill Williamson
It'll just keep going.
01:03:59
Paul Regnier
That's like the best ring ever.
01:04:00
Jill Williamson
Oh, oh
01:04:01
Paul Regnier
Well, well okay. So um we wanted to give, obviously, Joe, we wanted to give you a chance to promote like maybe some of your latest projects and maybe whatever your web website address is with the with a wonderful Elvin music playing in the background.
Promoting the Blood of Kings Legends
01:04:17
Jill Williamson
Yes, I have my soundtrack. Okay, yes, my website is jillwilliamson.com. I have an indie store too. You can buy my books through my store and I'll sign them. Right now, what's coming out? Well, I talked about the Blood of Kings legends. So I did this weird thing where I decided to write my own books that were taking place parallel to my author's stories. So this book, Shadow of Ice Island came out in, forget when it came out, February, I think of this year. And it it shadows ah Andrew...
01:04:45
Jill Williamson
Swearingen's Lord of Winter. So his characters are in here having their story, but mine are there too. And so when he wrote his book, I was like, you got to write my characters into this scene in that scene. So it fun. And so in June comes out book two, which is called a Scoundrel of Claymore Keep.
01:04:59
Jill Williamson
And it happens in the desert. And it and it parallels of some different things. So I've been having fun with these King spies, they're minstrel spies. So they're they're singing songs, but they're also watching. So I'm having fun with them.
01:05:08
Paul Regnier
Fun.
01:05:10
Jill Williamson
So that's my that's my current one.
01:05:11
Paul Regnier
i think.
01:05:12
Jill Williamson
And it's this book two is coming in June.
01:05:15
Paul Regnier
and You've got minstrels playing in the background so it all ties together.
01:05:17
Jill Williamson
They're over there. Yes, they're playing me a song.
01:05:18
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
01:05:21
Lindsay Franklin
And the title one more time of that one was,
01:05:23
Jill Williamson
this This one is Shadow of Ice Island.
01:05:23
Lindsay Franklin
so
01:05:26
Lindsay Franklin
out of ice island for all of the listeners who don't have the visual that cover is really beautiful by the way.
01:05:32
Paul Regnier
yeah
01:05:32
Lindsay Franklin
So go to YouTube, see the
01:05:33
Jill Williamson
yes but
01:05:36
Paul Regnier
Very good. All right. Well, thank you, Jill, so much for being a part of our podcast. And thank you to everyone listening. We hope this was helpful and we will see you next time.
01:05:46
Lindsay Franklin
Bye.
01:05:46
Jill Williamson
Thanks.