Most people feel, at one point or another in their lives, that they’ve “got a book in them.” And with the whole spectrum of human experience being lived on this planet every single day, a lot of them do.

If we just keep to the category of nonfiction, we’re talking about true stories of people who travel, uncover secrets, or overcome major struggles during their time on earth. We’re talking about people who know areas of science and history and culture that you’ve never even heard of. Or the best cooks in the world, or people who want to share knowledge about dying crafts and hobbies.

You might be one of these people. You might dream of writing a book one day to leave a legacy or give something back to humanity or just share something you think is cool.

But as much as I love human creation and personal exploration, I think people should be way more circumspect about “having a book in them” and actually writing it. And that’s for several reasons. One is a consideration for the aspiring writer. Writing books is really, really hard. It takes time and a whole set of skills you might not have developed yet, no matter how much work you might have done to develop your other skills and knowledge.

The other is a consideration for the whole world of readers out there drowning in content and struggling to find quality. Our inboxes are stuffed with more updates then we’ll ever be able to read and our social media feeds are seas of people all screaming about the same things. We might be interested in topics, but the screaming! The screaming takes up all the real estate in our heads that might otherwise be filled with actually helpful insights to make our lives richer.

And yet another consideration is for the writers who actually create excellent work and struggle to have it discovered in a saturated market. “Yeah, boohoo, that’s the market,” you might be thinking. Yeah, you’re right. Nobody is owed a readership. But I do happen to think a lot of important stuff gets overlooked due to the fact that they’re just too hard to find.

Especially in our current tech landscape, people think that the “book in them” will be a lot easier to write. And on the surface, I can’t argue with that. If you can throw some info into Claude and be like “make this sound good”…that is empirically easy.

But if that’s what you do, was that really the book that was in you? Or is that the book in the collective unconscious of the scraped internet and destroyed books? Will it be written in your actual voice or in the universal voice that we’re all compressing into like a collapsing star system (whether we actually use AI or not)? Will what’s written in that book be true, or did it just borrow from people who were talking out of their asses on Reddit? And if you didn’t take the time to actually fact check or develop your voice and ideas, is it really “yours” at all?

And don’t get me wrong, it’s not just an AI thing. I’ve said it before: the slop was coming from inside the house. The sheer volume of books we’ve been producing, especially since self-publishing became so accessible, has exploded.

And let’s be real—a lot of it’s trash.

I’m not saying, “Your baby is ugly,” I’m saying, “People have been slapping things together with no eye for quality and throwing them online, since long before they started ‘writing’ books with LLMs.”

(Although, you know what? I won’t sugar coat it. If you’re not putting in the work on your craft, checking your sources, and getting helpful feedback and collaborating to make a good product, your baby is probably ugly.)

So is that the kind of book and content culture you want to be a part of? Just make some trash to ostensibly make some money? And by “some money” I mean, maybe a hundred dollars…if you’re lucky?

If you’re actually listening to this, I really doubt that’s what you want for yourself. If nonfiction is your thing, dear reader, I imagine you want to make—or read or help someone else make—books that people read and benefit from. That could be learning something applicable to their lives, giving them an emotional experience with yours or someone else’s compelling life story, or just fulfilling someone’s curiosity and giving them the opportunity to connect with subjects beyond themselves.

And it’s both easier and harder to do than ever. You can get more help finding sources, but you can’t trust without verifying: and that process of verifying takes a lot of willpower and stick-to-itiveness. There are talented designers and editors everywhere, but they do need to be paid. There are tools that you can use yourself to create the books (and the marketing work that you must do to promote them), but those cost money too and often require you to develop new skills.

But if doing this really matters to you, if you really want to go to the trouble of writing and publishing nonfiction, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why? Why do you want to publish a nonfiction book?
2. Are you willing to put in the time, money, and energy it takes to get it done?
3. How far are you willing to go to put out worthwhile and accurate information?
4. And maybe this should be the question you ask before a lot of those other ones, who do you want to read it and what value would it actually bring them?

The next several episodes are going to be deeper dives into answering some of those questions, which will hopefully give you clarity as you decide whether and how you want to write nonfiction.

Why are you doing it?

Nonfiction isn’t just about “learning” something, and “learning” something isn’t just a function of nonfiction. (If you’ve never learned anything from fiction, I simply don’t believe you.) It’s a wide-ranging category—definitely not a single genre.

As I’m looking for a way to define it, in fact, I’m struggling to find a definition I agree with. I started on Wikipedia and it said, “Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real world, rather than being grounded in imagination.” I can’t even except that, because a lot of nonfiction is written in bad faith.

Merriam-Webster says, “Writing or cinema that is about facts and real events.” And I’m dubious of that definition as well. You always have to ask “According to who?” at the end of that one.

Definitions aside, there are a lot of types of nonfiction and reasons to write it. Narrative nonfiction, like memoir and journalistic pieces full of interviews and connected threads; prescriptive nonfiction that gives you tools to learn new practical skills or heal from trauma; even joke books and trivia books and all those fun little morsels that your dad kept next to the toilet.

But let’s focus on the motivation for writing first.

One is that you have an idea you want to expand. You see connections between different topics that you believe are all wired together, and you want to unscrew the cover and show that circuit board to the world. There’s a lot of love in making those connections for people, and it takes a lot of work. You could be a physical scientist trying to break down complex ideas for laypeople or a sociologist connecting different phenomenon into a way to help readers make sense of human behavior. Or you might just want to share everything you know about your favorite movie subgenre.

This is nonfiction that’s based on curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. Whether it’s just to feed interest or to help readers know more about the way the world works, as you see it, your primary interest here is to inform and enlighten.

Another motivation is you have a message to send. Your biggest priority is a clear call to action. Religious or not, you’re evangelizing for a cause: you’re trying to prove to people why they should care about something.

Arguably, you can make that thing they care about you. Like, you personally. If anyone has ever encouraged you to use your book as a “business card” (and yes those words have come out of my mouth before), that’s a form of message.

Political books, self help, spiritual nonfiction, they’re all based on sharing a message. And at least over the last decade, it’s been the most popular type. But it’s also the type of motivation where I’d start getting dubious of the “facts and real events” claim.

The next motivation is that you’re driven to tell a story: a true story about yourself and someone else. Memoirs and biographies and histories are examples. Maybe that’s to inspire people or to warn them, or inform them or unite them. That brings me to my next point—with nonfiction, a lot of these motivations overlap. Sometimes narrative and prescription overlap. You may have all of it in your book.

You may want to connect ideas regarding historical events to call people to action. You might want to tell stories of different activists whose work intersects. Hell, you may just want to share all the hiking trails in a particular area, informing people so they can spend more time out in nature—and use the stories of your own hiking adventures to frame them all.

Writing nonfiction involves a lot of thinking across a lot of domains, and to keep from making the whole process miserable for yourself, you’ve got to have at least one of those motivations driving you.

Do you have the time, money, and energy?

To state the obvious: writing is hard, and the big esoteric parts aren’t it. The mechanics and practicalities themselves are difficult. For a lot of people (and at this point, that includes me) they’re the most difficult part of all.

First, if you’ve got a day job and also want to write, you’re going to have to make sacrifices and create strategies . And if you have some kind of neurodivergence or chronic illness or anything that causes brain fog or makes you get tired faster? It’s going to take you some work to figure out how to manage your energy and pin down a time where you can actually write. Even task switching itself, before you even start the writing process, takes energy.

And with nonfiction, you can’t really just sit down and start writing the story in your head and see where the wind takes you. Not even fiction writers can always do that. Before you can even get started, you need to have your ducks in a row. You need to have a theme, you need to do research—which could mean anything from finding books, primary sources, or scheduling interviews. You’d be amazed at the True Detective or, depending on your preferred genre, Pepe Silvia boards that nonfiction writers put on their walls. Over the course of their writing lives, some people will spend hundreds of dollars in Post-It notes.

And here’s something people don’t talk about but is very real: actual physical pain. I ghostwrite and copyedit nonfiction daily; I write fiction and podcast scripts and newsletters, and I now work and sleep in wrist braces 100% of the time I’m working or sleeping. Sometimes I have to take the night off with the heating pad wrapped around my forearm. Repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome are real problems, and they hurt. And if you spend enough time typing, you’ll get something going on with you, no matter how ergonomic your setup.

“Just dictate then, if that’s a problem for you,” you might say. Okay. But it’s not like you can just pick up a microphone and start dictating. If you don’t write very much otherwise, dictating can be a great way to get your thoughts into words, but if you do write a lot, you might find speaking uses a completely different set of cognitive skills.

And that’s not to mention the transcription errors. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you know I love to post the things that my transcription programs think I said.

And then there’s software, which…boring, yeah, but just because you have a computer doesn’t mean this is all for free. And if you’re not paying with your money, you are paying with your data and the technological hoops you have to jump through in this age of enshittification. But we’ve talked about that plenty, haven’t we?

How far are you willing to go to put out worthwhile and accurate information?

Right now, Amazon is full of a glut of self-published reference books that are fully AI generated. It seems like people have kind of forgotten what supply and demand means, so just a little reminder: what usually happens when there are a high volume of identical products on the market, the price goes down (I know…imagine prices going down!). So people who are creating AI generated books need to produce a lot of them to see any actual profits.

Most of the people who post these books are not fact checking. Why would they? The whole point of this is that they don’t want to do any work.

You as the writer are responsible for supplying us with the correct information. And I mean “we” as readers, but also “we” as people who work in publishing. There is no real gate a book has to pass through that requires accurate information before it’s posted, not for self-published books at least. A nonfiction book, particularly a self-published one, can jut be put up online no matter whether or not the information is true.

If this is a reference book, that can be a disaster. Because people aren’t just using nonfiction books to write reports, they’re using it for activities that might actually pose danger if done wrong.

Back to the AI slop example: Emily Bender and Alex Hanna tell a story in their book The AI Con about how machine-generated books can literally be dangerous. Members of a Mycological Society in New York—a mushroom foraging organization—noticed a lot more books being posted online about foraging. And this isn’t something that you just pack up and do risk-free. Mushrooms famously can be extremely poisonous, which most people know, including—I assume—whoever posted this AI-generated book.

Reddit posters have talked about how trusting these foraging books have sent their entire families to the hospital.

This rise in AI-generated self publishing books means LLMs are asked for information about things that can affect people’s lives and health. Fortunately for real experts, that means that more than ever, readers need nonfiction that they can trust from people who know what they’re talking about.

As for traditional publishing: while some legal departments are very careful about fact-checking what makes it onto the market, there often aren’t provisions in a contract saying the company will fact check you, which is something I’d like to talk about more in a future episode.

The bottom line? Presenting accurate information is, in fact, your responsibility as the writer, and even if the publishing company gets a little embarrassed, the author is going to bear the brunt of any repercussions that come from inaccuracies. It might be from readers, it’s often from journalists, and unless you’re already some well regarded author who can go hide for a while, lick their wounds, then make a comeback, it could cost you a future book deal.

Who do you want to read it and what value would it bring them?

Writers are often accused of being self-focused, even self absorbed. That’s understandable. We live in our heads a lot of the time, and when we’re trying to constantly develop ideas, it can be hard to get out. In fiction, we can easily advise people “write for yourself” to get the stories out that mean so much to them. That’s part of why fanfiction is a thing: a lot of people write fiction for the fun of it.

Unless we’re talking about memoirs, it’s not really the same for nonfiction. For nonfiction, with few exceptions, the motivation has to point outwards. When you’re thinking about the “why” behind your nonfiction book, and the process of selling them and marketing them, it’s not just about you anymore.

As a nonfiction writer, your category implies expertise to readers. But anyone can write a book, and now anyone can put them up online as well. Those “facts and true events” come with a big asterisk. If you’ve got human integrity and expertise, you have a responsibility to make your book actually valuable to people (or at least that’s what I think).

The very fact that the market is so saturated means that, if you really know what you’re talking about, people need your nonfiction. They need your high-quality, well-researched, experience and expertise-driven nonfiction. Writing for the quick buck isn’t enough—you won’t even get one. You can get anything for $1.99 on Amazon, or for free with the right ChatGPT prompt. But what sets you apart are the ideas in your brain, the way you connect them, and the research and rigor you are willing to put in.

An LLM is only going to produce what a person can think to ask it. People don’t know what they don’t know. LLMs cannot offer up the connections that people don’t think to ask about. That’s up to you.

So you have to ask yourself: what matters to you more than the money? In fact, I’d say that you shouldn’t expect to make money doing it at all. And damn do I wish it weren’t like that, but it is. And if you do want to make money, without committing to being a grifter (because grifting is a commitment), you need to think about what the reader will gain from reading your book. And if you do want to make it part of your career, you’ll need to figure out how to use that book in combination with your other activities in order to do that.

Think about how it will help people understand the world better, how it will make them understand themselves better. How will it help them get the outcomes they want or make peace with the things that scare them or confuse them? How will it help them bring meaning into their lives?

Because if it’s bringing them meaning and clarity, it’s going to do the same thing for you in the process.

We are far from done here…

Over the coming episodes, we’re going to explore different topics and concerns in nonfiction and the challenges that each of these things present. We’re going to dig into the subjects I mentioned—talking about timeless writing topics like propaganda and misinformation, research processes, interviewing, and fact checking. But we’re also going to dig into why writing a nonfiction book even matters when people have podcasts to listen to and YouTube videos to watch and ChatGPT to consult, and when there’s a glut in the market and a rise in anti-intellectualism and book banning.

Lots of kind, optimistic people believe that everyone has a book in them. I want to be one of those people, but for my part, I think I need to throw some caveats in there.

Unless you have an entire self-contained encyclopedia of a brain, the book that is in you isn’t completely in you right now. Some of that book is still outside of you. It needs to be fed into you or built into you, like you’re an intellectual cyborg. And maybe it needs to get out of you and go into an incubator—so you can get a good look at it and figure out how to complete it. Develop and solidify your ideas, take that unfinished book from something squishy to something with structure and a respiratory and circulatory system.

And that might require you to grow as a person, to travel, to get input from the outside world so you eventually have something to show for all that growth.

And then, when it’s finally done, you need to be ready for it not to belong to you anymore. You can influence it and direct where it goes, but it’s now part of that growing cavalcade of books that makes up the information we swim in daily. You want it to float on top of that sea of screaming.

The first step to turning that intellectual fetus into a full-grown book is to decide how much you’re ready to commit. But unlike a child, your book really is an extension of you. Do whatever you need to do to make it good.

The post Episode 92: So You Want to Write Nonfiction… first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 92: So You Want to Write Nonfiction… appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

When I found out that Jessie Kwak released a new book on writing books, I decided to order it straight from the source at Microcosm Publishing. From Chaos to Creativity serves as such an effective manual, I figured the ability to pick up one of her books and thumb through it for the tips I needed was worth the paper. Then last week, as I recuperated from a medical procedure, I thought I’d break into it to see what pearls it had to offer.

Listen to Episode 15 with Joe Biel, Founder and Manager of Microcosm Publishing.

As soon as I opened From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Process that Brings You Joy, I had to reach for my laptop and boot up Evernote. After reading From Chaos to Creativity, I should have known Jessie Kwak’s newest would be similarly packed to the gills with amazing quotes, vividly illustrated concepts, and a Matryoshka doll’s worth of book recommendations. It requires quite a bit more attention than an afternoon on the couch with no notetaking equipment in hand can afford.

This book is a great balance of practical exercises and psychological insights about different facets of the writing craft and process. It’s an excellent starting point for people who want guidance on their process of getting a book ready for publication, or even a midpoint for people who have done it before and want to sharpen their systems. In fact, it might be sufficient for many as a manual for the whole process (although, it is also redolent of recommendations to books on craft, creativity, and productivity).

In similar fashion as in From Chaos to Creativity, this book gives the reader ample space to be themselves and focus on what works best for them. “As I’ll be saying over and over and over in this book,” she says, “you do you.”

What You’ll Find in From Big Idea to Book

From Big Idea to Book is organized into the three major stages of work on a book and addresses issues faced by both fiction and nonfiction authors.

Planning

This book manages to walk an idiosyncratic line. Imagination and inspiration are not treated as elusive beasts to be tamed or to be dismissed as imaginary. The first chunk of the book includes ways to pin down ideas, then allow them to grow, change, or make room for different ones altogether.

Drafting

There is no sugar-coating how difficult it is to make it through the process of drafting an actual book; writers have to negotiate the unexpected behavior of characters, mental blocks waiting around unexpected bends in the plot, and corners where authors accidentally trap themselves. Fortunately, there are plenty of exercises and suggestions made for how to climb over, push through, or chart a new path.

Revising

The latter portion is for folks who want help during the last stretch, where the work is polished into something shiny and enticing. The revising section also includes a breakdown of different types of editors and where they fit into different stages of writing a book. She also discusses alpha readers and beta readers and how they can let writers see their book through the eyes of the people that will hopefully love it!

Key Takeaways and Tools

The following are three themes of From Big Idea to Book that really meant something to me.

The Value of Inverting One’s Thinking

A lot of the suggestions in this book invite the reader to think about different steps of the writing process from new perspectives. An early example is challenging the idea that idea generation, outlining, and plotting a book are different from “writing” a book. Under the header Planning is Writing, Jessie points out how many writers rush through the planning process because they have been taught word count is everything. She reminds us that activities like going for walks, talking through our ideas with friends, and even just staring into space, are all important parts of the writing process.

Another mental trick she mentions was suggested in one of her writer’s groups to someone who was struggling with being blocked: “What if you just tell yourself you aren’t a writer anymore?” The question was meant to inspire the person to express their creativity for a while in alternate ways, and to free them from the mental frameworks writers build around themselves that ultimately hold them back.

That particular idea hit me in a really personal way, because it was something I tried myself. All my life I’d had these ideas of what it was to be a writer inside my head—all the ways my life should work, the times of day I should write, the way I see the world. Then one day, I said, “What if I just am not a writer?” 

Instead of depressing me, the thought freed me as if from handcuffs I’d lost the keys to years earlier. I went on to learn a ton about publishing business, marketing, and design—the things that go into creating books, websites, and other print and digital publications that don’t involve “being a writer.” Now that I’ve turned back to writing both fiction and nonfiction myself, I feel comfortable inhabiting a writer’s identity again. The lessons I’ve learned in the meantime have shown me there are many different ways to be a writer and to do the actual work. The possible amazing outcomes of flipping the way we think about ourselves and our work can’t be overstated

Practice Self-Examination—but in Moderation

Jessie suggests activities suggested at each point in the writing process from free writing to fully walking away from one’s desk. These activities are meant to get writers unstuck when they have a mental block or an element of their plot that makes sense. They can also help them empower the ideas that have the greatest go-power. However, there are limits to how much one can and should reflect before falling into the trap of overthinking. Kwak encourages readers to go through reflective exercises, but when the time comes to write—turn off all distractions and write.

One of my favorite topics discussed is how to write through drafts without stopping and revising as one goes, a struggle for many of us. A major theme is silencing the critical voice. Informed by the words of authors like Anne Lamott, who suggests (to paraphrase) letting the voice shout itself out and then silencing it to move on. Kwak also Twitter-sourced thoughts from other writers regarding how they move through this troublesome stage.

Author Jordan L. Hawk mentioned that every time a turn of phrase in a sentence bothers him, instead of fixing it, he’ll just write “[ugh]” and continue writing. This is almost exactly what I try to do when I write my own drafts (and anyone who has shared a Google doc with me—including my clients—can attest to this quirk). The difference is, Hawk claims that when he goes back to read those sentences, they’re usually left as is (though I can’t say that’s the case for me).

Look for Joy at Every Stage

“Joy” is right there in the book title, and it shows up again and again throughout the text. One thing Jessie reminds readers to do is to celebrate every milestone of book creation. That means every finished outline, draft, or revision. She also has a wealth of ideas for bringing pleasure to those supposedly duller points in the writing process. She talks about how self-editing, which is the most plodding and unpleasant part for many authors, is actually one of her favorites because it helps her bring the book closer to everything she’d imagined it could be. Jessie says, “This is also where I can waste a lot of time going over and over a scene, tweaking words and digging for gold.”

There are quite a few references to digging and excavating and caving and mining, and I believe these images are truly effective to describe the work of completing a book. Ultimately, writers are digging down inside themselves and getting under the surface of the world around them to find the stories they and their readers will treasure.

I’m happy that I added this book to my writing and publishing bookshelf. I’ll be referencing it the next time I get started on a book of my own and probably at all the hurdles I hit along the way. 

Buy From Big Idea to Book here, and get Jessie’s first book From Chaos to Creativity here.

The post From Big Idea to Book by Jessie Kwak — Planning, Drafting, and Revising with Joy first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post From Big Idea to Book by Jessie Kwak — Planning, Drafting, and Revising with Joy appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

When it comes to your own book, you sometimes reach a point where you’re not sure whether readers will be able to navigate it. Maybe something feels “off” that you can’t quite articulate. Maybe you know what’s missing, but you aren’t sure how to fix it. In a solitary pursuit like writing, this uncertainty can make you feel even more alone.

Trying to map major landmarks and engineer a smooth-running book can be daunting when you’ve been moving through everything on foot. You can only see story elements from the ground level when you really need to see how it all comes together. To create something comprehensible to the reader, you need to be able to see how all the building blocks come together, and what they look like from 10,000 feet. When you’ve been so absorbed with putting one foot, or one page, in front of the other for so long, your perspective may be a bit skewed.

That’s why it’s important to have a second pair of eyes—someone who can spot where your sidewalks abruptly end or where you have a dangerous and depressing cluster of abandoned buildings; someone to point out any gaping plot holes that might cause your readers to break their ankles (or at least their concentration). A manuscript evaluation is a deep dive into all the structures, components, and features that have to come together for a well-crafted and cohesive book.

A quick note: What I describe below is a full manuscript evaluation. Other options include partial evaluations, or lighter evaluations. Generally the following will be covered for a book of any length, with variation to the depth of these reviews.

Manuscript Evaluations for Fiction

Fiction is deeply personal, as writers become attached to their characters and ideas. While it can hurt to hand that over for someone to analyze, a good faith evaluation can turn your book into a place where readers will want to hang out for a while. It will probably even give you a renewed burst of writerly energy.

Plot, Structure, and Pacing

For readers to feel like they’re where they’re supposed to be within a book, (even if that book is full of surprises!) it has to be well structured. The evaluator will be able to give input on where their attention wanders away, parts of the book that don’t feel relevant to the overall plot, and places where an event or action seems out of step with the rest of the story. The right questions asked at the right points can spark your imagination and help you plug those plot holes. You can also get feedback on specific places in the narrative where you’re unsure of what readers’ reactions will be.

Genre conventions

If you’re attempting to write sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or romance, having an evaluator who knows about the conventions and reader expectations in those genres is a must. Also, it really helps if the evaluator is a true fan of the genre, otherwise their feedback may not reflect the experience of a reader who voluntarily seeks out books in your genre. If children’s books are your passion, be sure to find someone who is well-versed in them; they can really benefit from people with specialized knowledge.

Characters

Few things turn readers off like characters who don’t seem authentic. Even if they’re not from planet earth, readers want more than just stick figures who move from one plot point to the next. You may or may not know whether you have a problem with a character, but often the person evaluating your manuscript will have some ideas for how to give them deeper dimensions. This applies to heroes, antiheroes, villains, and side characters at all levels of likability and relatability.

Culture

If you have characters of races, ethnicities, genders, or orientations in your book that differ from yours (as you should!), an evaluator can point out where you need a little more realism. This is also true for stories set in places other than your home and in cultures other than yours. Sometimes an evaluator may refer you to a sensitivity reader if your story has major elements where different cultures come into play, and could do with an expert’s eyes.

Manuscript Evaluation for Nonfiction

While nonfiction manuscripts need some similar elements to fiction, there is an entirely new set of standards used to measure nonfiction books. The following specifically refers to the kinds of nonfiction books written to guide and teach the reader (memoir is a whole different animal).

Theses and Arguments

While your nonfiction book needs to have an overall thesis, it also needs to have a thesis for every chapter. Once these theses are established, the chapters and the book as a whole must deliver on their promises to demonstrate those theses. Naturally you can’t just state a thesis without supporting it properly. Your evaluator will check for unclear passages, arguments that don’t make sense, or theses that aren’t supported.

Pacing and Transitions

Your points need to be in order and logically build on one another; otherwise, readers won’t have the background information they need to understand what you are trying to argue or instruct. Someone evaluating your book, especially if they are not an expert in your subject, will be able to tell you if you aren’t introducing concepts in an order that makes sense. You can use their advice to rearrange sections and chapters and define terms and concepts at the proper times.

Voice and Style

Voice is, of course, part of what makes fiction attractive, but in nonfiction it’s just as important. Nonfiction books have fine lines to walk: you don’t want to sound like everyone else, but you also want to sound professional. You want your material to be cogent and approachable, but you want to offer information that actually gives the reader something they didn’t have before. Evaluators can point out where the text becomes too dry and make suggestions on how to identify, amplify, and stabilize.

Get Back on the Road

Once you’ve got your review in hand, what do you do? You get back to work on your book, that’s what! The difference is, now you’ve got a chart in your hand that will help you zero in on all the places that need to be refurbished, built out, or completely demolished. If you’d like a full evaluation of your manuscript, a comprehensive report, and a one-on-one consultation on how you can put the action items in that report to work, visit my services page, or reach out at emily(@)emilyeinolander.com.

The post What is a manuscript evaluation? first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post What is a manuscript evaluation? appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

If you’re a person who works in a creative profession, we’re coming in hot with some inspiration and guidance for 2022. In this episode, Emily speaks with writer Jessie Kwak, author of (among other things) From Chaos to Creativity: Building a Productivity System for Artists and Writers.

Jessie shares the four steps to her creative system, tips for prioritizing, how to protect against overloading oneself, and some tools to help us stay organized and on task.

Productivity shouldn’t be how you can do more things more efficiently. It’s about how to do the right things and free up the space and the mental energy that you need to do your creative work.

Guest Bio

Jessie Kwak is a freelance writer and author living in Portland, Oregon. She writes character-driven sci-fi and fantasy with a liberal dose of explosions, gunfights, crime, and dinner parties. She likes to make her readers laugh. She is the author of supernatural thriller From Earth and Bone, the Durga System series of gangster sci-fi novels, and productivity guide From Chaos to Creativity.

When she’s not writing B2B marketing copy or scribbling away on her latest novel, you can find her riding her bike to the brewpub, road tripping with her husband, or juggling various sewing projects.

Tools and References in this Episode

• From Chaos to Creativity: Building a Productivity System for Artists and Writers
• Productive Flourishing with Charlie Gilkey and Angela Wheeler
• Evernote: An app for capturing notes about projects (or whatever else!)
• Freedom: An app that helps you focus by blocking social media sites during your work sessions.
• Self-Control: Same as above, but with an edgier logo
• Forest: A gamified app that helps you grow (and kill!) trees with your ability to stay off your phone (or not!)
• A full transcript of this episode can be downloaded here

The post Episode 59: From Chaos to Creativity with Jessie Kwak first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 59: From Chaos to Creativity with Jessie Kwak appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.