Let's Go! A Guide to Increasing Your Confidence - by Emily Jaenson

When I get an email with the subject line: "I Wrote a Book," it gets my attention. The note was from the daughter-in-law of one of my husband's work colleagues. The author of Let's Go! is Emily Jaenson and I suspect you will be hearing more about her. Her book, available in Spring 2024, is titled: "Let's Go! A Guide to Increasing Your Confidence." "Let’s go! A Guide to Increasing Your Confidence: How to go from too shy to order a pizza to unstoppable. By practicing the right behaviors, you can change your attitude over time and grow into a more confident, goal directed person. This book lights the way." In her TedX talk, Emily shares her journey from being very shy to being the only female general manager of a Triple-A baseball team, the Reno Aces. Emily's TedX talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IitIl2C3Iy8 has had over 2.7M views. Her story point out that everyone, especially young women, can have the confidence to succeed. Emily also has a podcast, so if you want to learn more, check her out.

The Writing Life - Old Women Who Write

Last week I was interviewed by Jean Peelen, who has started a website and Facebook page called Old Women Who Write. Jean contacted me and asked if I would consider being interviewed. I thought about that because I don't consider myself "old." Jean explained that her idea was that women of any age can start writing, be part of a writing community, and get published. That made sense. So, if you would like to see the interview she did with me, along with the others, here is the link: https://www.oldwomenwhowrite.com/ In the meantime, I've been making great progress on the book featuring Autumn Whitcomb and Yuri Rachinskij. I'm working on their background information before they run into each other in Upstate New York. I'm a member of Sisters in Crime Connecticut and they have a write-in two days a week. I try to Zoom in for one of those and this week I accomplished over 1,600 words in the two hours. Now, if I could just keep that up. Here in Connecticut we've ended winter and went right into summer. Although I'm not happy with the hot weather this early in the year, it does prompt me to stay in and write.

The Writing Life

A recap: I’m working on two books. One, Imminent Danger, that I started at the end of 2019 that dealt with a super virus developed in a Chinese biotech lab. When Covid-19 became a reality, I couldn’t believe China had copied my plot line!! At over 30,000 words, I put the manuscript aside. That’s when I wrote the fourth book, Deadly Secrets, in the Caitlyn Jamison mystery series. Last summer I was encouraged to finish Imminent Danger, so I reworked the plot line, and added new characters. In an exercise at the end of two rural library Zoom author talks last October, I asked the library patrons to develop a character. Two interesting characters were developed that I thought would make a great story. That book carries the working title of Autumn after one of the characters. I’d been making great progress on Autumn, working on the backstory of the two main characters until Kara, the new protagonist from Imminent Danger appeared on my shoulder wanting equal time. New scenes for Imminent Danger have been scrolling through my head. Thank you, Kara! Okay. I can manage this. Both books are well enough developed that I can switch back and forth as the dueling protagonists fight for my attention. But, on my early morning walk today, Sage, a secondary character from Deadly Secrets tapped me on the shoulder saying, “Remember me?” During the writing of Deadly Secrets, I developed a character, Sage, and her partner, Holly, that I thought would make a great spin-off book or series from the Caitlyn Jamison books. I had not thought about them since . . . until this morning when Sage, the owner of the art shop in the town of Pont-Aven made her presence known. Can I handle three books at the same time? I think not. I will pull out my notebook and jot down thoughts on the “future” adventures of Sage and Holly.

The characters are in charge

My next book features Autumn Whitcomb and Yuri Rachinskij, two characters developed by participants after two author presentations at two Upstate New York rural libraries. One library's patrons developed a female, the other a male. When their bios were developed by the patrons I realized these two characters could work well in a story. I've been working on this in fits and starts until recently when Autumn tapped me on the shoulder (kind of like that editor on your shoulder) and told me I needed to spend more time developing her back story. I was rushing the story too much without letting the reader know about her personality. The same was true of Yuri. At the start of the story he's the head archivist of the Ukrainian Archives. The country is under attack and the archives have undertaken a major digitization project to save the country's history and culture before it is destroyed. Listening to Autumn, I'm now back at the beginning of the story making tweaks to the text to follow her advice. That's the life of a writer - the characters are in charge.

Incorporating Tension

Think of tension as a cord woven through every chapter, slowly pulling the reader towards the last scenes. Tension doesn’t need to be dramatic, like a serial killer who has broken into a house. For romance writers, it could be the question of whether the protagonist will choose his/her dream job, or stay with their new love? Tension can be emotional turmoil. Whatever genre you are writing, pack your scenes with some sort of tension with conflict within the character’s mind or with other characters. Put complications and conflicts into the character’s life and this can be accomplished through action, dialogue, description, and narrative. Draw out the scene with words that evoke emotion and keep raising the stakes. Remember the slowly woven cord. Alternate between action, thoughts, dialogue and description. Take your time. Make sure the scene is set up in earlier scenes so the reader knows what’s at stake, to keep their heart pounding and keep them turning the pages. Torture your protagonist with road blocks. It could be as simple as a weather event – like a blizzard when your protagonist has to be somewhere. A search engine is your friend in finding tension words. In the book Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, he suggests using a scale to rate the intensity of your scenes. The intensity scale is a good way for you to balance the scenes in your book. Determine which scenes are the big ones and rate their intensity, which should be in the 8-10 zone. Then balance those scenes with ones that are slower and more reflective in the 2 to 6 zone.

Hybrid it Is

As people start to gather, feeling a bit safer coming out of Covid, organizations that relied on Zoom, Google Meet, and other online meeting places, are trying to bring people back to meeting in person. But there's some pushback. Some people crave the personal contacts, but many prefer the online presence. We've become used to jumping onto our devices five minutes before a meeting with no changing clothes, driving to a specified location, or asking for a ride. Those online meetings have saved us a lot of time. I can still facilitate the fiction critique group from the Fredericksburg, VA library while I'm in Connecticut or Florida. For the last two years I've been able to attend two genealogy society meetings via Zoom. Organizations are now accommodating both constituents by offering hybrid meetings. This past week I gave Zoom presentations for two rural libraries in Upstate New York. It was great fun with folks sitting in the library and others at home on Zoom. A year ago I gave an in-person, but outside, presentation in Essex, New York. I asked those attending for help with the setting of my book in process, Deadly Secrets, set in their town. The group had a great time sharing what they loved about living in the Adirondacks, and what wasn't so much fun. It really helped me with details I wouldn't otherwise have known, and I appreciated their input. Last week, on Zoom with the two Upstate New York libraries, at the end of the presentation, I asked participants to develop a character for my next book. The patrons jumped right in to create a character. Each one was different, both with interesting characteristics. One library's patrons developed a male, the other library's patrons developed a female. Ironically, the two characters complement each other in a way that will make an interesting story. I'm looking forward to doing more Zoom presentations, and am happy to Zoom into book club meetings to share ideas. I, for one, am thankful that libraries and genealogy societies are offering hybrid meetings. Because I can't be in all these places!!

Deja Vu - An Unexpected Death to Imminent Danger

A question every author has to ask when starting a project is: What is this story about? That question has to be asked throughout the writing, because when the plot and characters are developed, the story will change. Revisting the story I started in 2019 (see earlier blog), I asked the question, and couldn't come up with a good answer. I had so many feelings going through my mind. Thoughts and emotions of what we had gone through the last two years. There were too many issues I wanted to touch on and plant the seed for readers to think about. I continued to ask the question: What is this story about? I boiled it down to the root issue. In doing that I felt the similarity of my feelings in 2008 when I started writing An Unexpected Death. At that time I was frustrated and angry over what was happening in our country. People were losing their jobs, and then losing their homes. And those responsible were not being held responsible. I had to release this anger, and through genealogy I'd learned that writing helps you make sense of things. And that's when I started writing. As I honed in on the root problem of the last two years, it was a similar feeling I had in 2008. Write about it, work out the frustration and anger, and plant seeds for readers to think about.