MarcyKate Connolly On The Differences Between Promoting Middle Grade & Young Adult

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy:       We're here today with MarcyKate Connolly, who is the author of multiple middle grade and young adult novels. And one of the things that I think is really interesting, and I stress it a lot whenever I am talking to new writers and up and coming writers is networking, networking, networking. With that in mind, why don't you talk a little bit about how we met in the first place?

MarcyKate: We met back in the day on AgentQuery Connect, and that was such a great place to meet other writers before we both were published. There was a whole bunch of us, and almost all of us have been published at this point, maybe a handful having not been. We got to reach each other's books and give feedback, and for me it was extremely helpful 'cause I really never got critique on my books before. It was like my friends and mostly they were like, This is so great, I love this! Which is great, but not as great for actually improving your novel and your craft, but having other writers working through this and learning how to critique and take critique. You can give critique, and we all kind of did that together, which is really fun. It's a good networking opportunity just to meet other writers and commiserate as well, especially when we're querying, that was like an absolute necessity to have someone to be like, Oh my God, it's been so long that they've been reading these pages or I just get another rejection.

Mindy:       I'm not sure if the boards are functioning anymore, it is still a database and a site that people can go to to get information about agents and what they accept. When we were there... Man, it was a lovely place to connect, like you were saying, and you're so right, you have to be able to share with other writers because the feedback that you get from friends, usually it'll be nice, but even if it's not entirely nice, it is usually their opinions. And are subjective, I didn't like this character, or this part wasn't funny, or something that is an opinion that a reader can have, but they aren't gonna be able to tell you exactly why. Usually they aren't able to pinpoint the word choices, whatever it was that they have this reaction. Sometimes they don't know why. And a writer, number one, knows that likeability isn't necessarily the most important aspect of character, but also number two, they can say why. Or they can give you ideas about how to fix it. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you are always taking the advice of another writer, but you have that in your tool box, you have the opinion of another writer, and I think when we talk about critique partners, it absolutely has to be another writer, if you really wanna get something out of it.

And a lot of us, I know I, for example, live rurally, there simply aren't any writing critique groups where I live. Every single one of us, when we met on AQC was working full-time, if not working more than one job, we couldn't necessarily do a writer's Brunch or, let's get together at noon on Wednesday. We were getting online after we got home from work in the evening and talking to each other, and operating that way. 

MarcyKate: It would have been nice to get together for brunch though, that would be awesome. But that was actually one of the best things about it really was members were from all over the country, so you wouldn't have met otherwise if you had a local group.

Mindy:       Absolutely, having that online access to so many people, I really don't think that I would have gotten an agent if I hadn't joined AQC because we were hard on each other, we made each other's queries improve, we were not hand-holding. I learned everything that I know about the industry from that site, there is no doubt in my mind, and people that were a little bit farther ahead of us, - like Sophie Perinot and she's also writing under the name Evie Hawtrey now, too. We were all operating under screen names at the time. Except for you, you actually had your real name out there. That was really cool, because some of us really did just know each other by our screen names. Interestingly enough, moving through the world now, I have run into people in the publishing industry that were on AQC at one point or another, and I'll share my screen name and they'll be like, Oh my gosh, that was you! That was me. 

MarcyKate: That's awesome. 

Mindy:       I'm sure that there are still sites like that now, I feel like I have no need for such a thing at this point, so I've moved away from that or even being aware of what's functioning, but I can say for sure that Query Tracker is always a reliable resource. Are there any others that you know of right now that we can point people towards? 

MarcyKate: Not off-hand. And the ones that I always use were AgentQuery dot com to track agents and Query Tracker  a combination of the two. Those are my go-tos. That's really what I used a lot.

Mindy:       And I think things have changed now where people are using Slack and Facebook groups and even Reddit subgroups. When I think about it, that was like 14, 15 years ago. The dynamic is still the same, that you can go online and you can meet these people and they're going to help you. So for example, there were two people in general that were really, really helpful to me, one of them who's actually gonna be a guest here on my next episode, who works in LA and is in the film industry, and so had different arenas, different ways to approach things, new areas of that angle of the business, but also kind of that more like slick LA style. Whereas Sophie Perinot who was operating there underneath a screen name who had an agent and was writing in a different arena, she was writing Adult Historical Fiction, but she was a rung up above the rest of us and was still hanging out every day and helping and so professional. She's just like, professional to a T.  She’d be like, This is how you interact with an agent, and this is the best practice. She knew best practices and etiquette.

MarcyKate: She was amazing. It was kind of a shock, I think, sometimes to some people who are brand new, and I think it always is, when they start to learn about what an agent is, how you get an agent, what they actually do. She was just full of information, which was really helpful to have that resource there. 

Mindy:       Like I said, when I moved through the industry now, some of the people that I run into are people that were on the boards and moving in the background, but also present, and we're just industry movers and shakers that were there. Being present and just even absorbing knowledge I probably lurked for five or six months before I had the nerve to post even just doing that, just lurking and just absorbing that information, I learned so much.

MarcyKate: I think I did a lot of lurking too. I don't remember exactly how long I lurked. Posting publicly is nerve wracking, you don't know what kind of feedback you're dealing with yet, 'cause you don't know the people.

 Mindy:           Well, that's part of what I did too, was I was just reading and listening and paying attention and seeing who was posting often, who was being helpful, who had the type of mindset that I wanted to interact with, that kind of thing.

MarcyKate: It was wonderful and I miss it. I think so fondly on those days, I miss it. It was really fun, especially during the pandemic too, where it's been very isolating. It was fun times, especially when we had the chat room. That was fun. 

Mindy:     Monday nights. Yeah, well, and it was my go-to when I got on the internet, it was like a Hotmail, and then AQC. That was my home.

MarcyKate: Same.

Mindy:     It built me. And then that's how I learned. You were just talking about the sheer number of people, and most of us are traditionally published now. In different arenas, but then also we have fellows who have gone on to start their own indie publishing company, there's a lot of different areas of success that I've seen. Jean Oram, who was the super moderator for a long time, I see her all the time moving in the Romance Indie world

MarcyKate:  Yeah she always has something going on.

Mindy:     It's different areas of success for everybody. And like I said, I think that's kind of unique. I think our success level, the percentage is higher than was to be expected.

MarcyKate:   I think so too. We became friends, there was that morale boost as well, we're obviously not pulling punches on critiquing our work. But to bounce ideas off, vent to, that I think really helped. That was helpful for me, and keeping me going and not being like another rejection - I'm done. That camaraderie really helped keep us going, at least it did for me.

Mindy:     I’d be like - So I got another rejection today, and then somebody is like, Well, I got my 300th rejection.

MarcyKate:   Perspective. 

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Mindy:     So I wanna talk about writing. Because you write both middle grade and YA with quite a bit of success.

MarcyKate:   I like to think so. I hope so. I started writing young adult books and then kinda fell into middle grade, then eventually my seventh book that was published was a young adult, so I took a lot to actually get published in young adult. I started writing my first published work Monstrous, I wrote it as a young adult. My agent took me on with it as young adult, and then we pushed to editors and my editor who ending up buying it was like, I wanna buy this as middle grade. Which kinda had us scratching our heads for a little bit, then we had a conversation with her, and it was really illuminating that the book really was middle grade, and I hadn't realized it was middle grade, except for this one part. And the last part of the book that we had to age down then it was middle grade. I kind of fell into it, but I love middle grade. It's a great age to be writing for, and I know for me when I was actually a middle grader, reading was just such a formative thing, it was so necessary. It was my escape. It was so important to me, so it's pretty cool writing for that age. It was also very important to me as a young adult, so I was excited to have some Young adult out there as well. So I actually write more young adult books and middle grade only they’re just still trying to get them out there published.

Mindy:     Yeah, young adult is super competitive. There's no doubt. I think the middle grade is actually edging that way too. Personally, I could never write it, it isn't my arena, it isn't my content, it isn't my subject matter, it isn't my age category, there's no world where I'm a middle grade writer.

MarcyKate:  Never say never, Mindy.

Mindy:     Can you imagine? It would be so bad.

MarcyKate:    I would love to read it.

Mindy:     I can do fart jokes. 

MarcyKate:   Yes! You’re funny! Like you are so funny, even though your books are dark, you could totally leverage your comedy skills in middle grade. This is an opportunity. You should absolutely do this.

Mindy:     Can you write a whole book about farts? 

MarcyKate:   You could try.

Mindy:     I don't know. farts are funny. That's true. Okay, ‘llI hang that on a peg in the back of my mind - write a Middle Grade fart book. This is one place where I hit the skids pretty hard when it comes to middle grade, and I was actually having a conversation in my last episode with Fred Koehler, he is an illustrator and a writer that lives in Florida, and he was saying... Especially during the pandemic, he's never interacting with his audience when he does a Zoom. You don't have 10-year-olds aren't excited about sitting down and meeting the writer on the computer, it's just not that interesting to them, the impact isn't there, and I think it's a really interesting dichotomy, because I know that for middle grade writers and children's writers, they can get into a school and they can absolutely mop it up and they can do amazing amount of sales and an amazing amount of work in one day going into a school visit. Teens are a harder sell. But I think that the online side of marketing and promotion for middle grade has to be super tricky, I assume that you're aiming it at the adults in their lives?

MarcyKate:    Exactly, it's definitely different from YA. You’re marketing to the gatekeepers. They're not buying their own books, people are buying them for them, and so you have to be able to find those people and make them sit up and take interest. So that means there's a lot of reaching out to libraries and teachers, getting reviewed in the School Library Journal and Kirkus and places like that, where they're looking for things and where they're tuned in. That's actually pretty important just to get that awareness out there that your book exists, 'cause they're not necessarily browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble or looking on Amazon for books, they're looking at other places. And I've been very fortunate that my publisher, most of my middle grade books are with Sourcebooks, and they're fantastic. They have this wonderful school and library marketing team, and they've been really great at getting my books out there. Things like getting your book in Junior Library Guild Selection also really helps, 'cause they are buying those as packages. I've been very fortunate that I think most of my books have been JLG selections, which is awesome. It's definitely a very different animal than with a young adult, 'cause young adult, you can actually reach the teens 'cause they are more online, and there's still obviously a lot of adults reading young adult books as well, but you can access them more directly.

I actually had four books launched during the pandemic, so four, two duologies. As you can imagine, they have not done as well as we would have liked, which is unfortunate. The first book, it was like right as the pandemic was starting, so I launched that one in person, that worked out fine, but then the second, third and fourth books were all during the pandemic, and for the fourth book, I didn't even do a virtual launch party. Because the first one was my first YA novel, Twin Daggers, and we had four people show up, and I think I know all but one of them. Then for the second one, no one showed up, it was just me and the two people from the bookstore. So we were hanging out on Zoom, which was fun. It was great, we chatted for like an hour, and actually the one person who I know did show up briefly for a little bit of time, but her microphone was having issues, so she really didn’t get to talk, which is too bad.

I kinda switched gears for the fourth book that came out, which was Lost Island, which was a sequel to Hollow Dolls, which is the first book that came out during the pandemic times. We did this pre-order incentive through my local bookstore Porter Square Books, that if you order it through them, you get some swag. It’s definitely Been much more difficult to get people engaged, generally speaking, during the pandemic. At least that's what I found, and it's also been more like emotionally taxing to be engaging yourself or putting yourself out there, the whole situation is very demoralizing and there's burn out on a personal level that just makes doing anything hard, and I was pregnant for most of it as well, so that didn’t help.

Mindy:     I have felt the same way. Be Not Far From Me came out, I was on tour, and I came home and we were on shutdown, and we haven't really done a whole lot since. I do think that people are burned out, and I think that they're done with virtual. And I think that at the beginning of the pandemic, everybody was like, We're gonna make the best of this. And it was kind of a new and novel experience, and then it was like, This is bullshit. I've done things with festivals where it'll be like four or five authors and we'll have maybe 17, 18 people show up and that's not bad, really. I just did a Zoom this past weekend that was supposed to be for the release of The Last Laugh back in March, and then it just didn't happen for various reasons, and we had to reschedule for here in May. It was me and Maureen Johnson, who is a big freaking deal, and we had nine people show up. She was totally cool, she was absolutely wonderful. I was like, I am so sorry that there were only nine people, and she was like, Oh, it's fine, I don't care at all, I don't mind. This is the job, and I was like, Thank you, I really appreciate that. I've been handing out her books to kids for 20 years, I was just like, Oh my God, this is embarrassing. Yeah, nine showed up.

MarcyKate:     I think every author can pretty much understand, unless like they're super famous and it's gone to their head, they forget.

Mindy:     I don't think I will ever forget because I am 12 books in. I had one actual bookstore signing for release week, the rest were all library events in school events, and for the library events they were bussing in kids and school events, and so it was captive audience type of stuff, and they were supremely successful. But again, attendance is mandatory. Right. And man, I was feeling good because things were going well, and I was just like, Oh my gosh, if I spoke to 300 kids about 150 bought a book. I could get with my audience, man, I was high on life, and I was telling my boyfriend - I don't know if it's because people are so excited to be able to go out and do things now, I don't know if people are just excited and appreciating life more, or if I'm doing better, if I'm more well-known, or if I'm just selling better, I was like, But I don't know, I’m killing it. Things are really working. Things are going good, right? And then I had a bookstore signing just me, and it was a drop-in thing on a Saturday afternoon, and I had one person show up. I sat there for two hours and one person showed up, and then this past weekend did a signing with Natalie Richards, who is a fellow Ohio author, she's a Sourcebooks, author.

MarcyKate:   We share an agent, actually.

Mindy:     And she's like,  super famous. NYT. And she and I did a signing together this past weekend, literally zero people.

MarcyKate:    That's hard. You're so hit or miss. Sometimes you'll have a ton of people. Other times like absolute crickets, it's so hit or miss.

Mindy:     I think it's good to be humbled, but I don’t want to be humbled all the time. That’s  why I think that for middle grade and ya authors - school visits. School visit. School visits.

MarcyKate:    Yeah, if you can get them. Those are definitely the best. I found it has been more difficult during the pandemic to get those. There's so much going on in schools and they're like, at first they were so concerned about how are we going to do testing? And that was a real big challenge initially, but since then I've done a few online ones which have been decently well-received, but it's not as, definitely not the same as going in person and having a book there to sign for the kids and handing them a physical copy like that. That's definitely a different dynamic. That's for sure.

Mindy:     Yeah, I've just now, in the past two months, started getting these school visits again, it's been really nice and the energy is there and everything about it. They feed me, I feed them and it all feels really good. I don't get that over-Zoom. I don't feel it. I don't think the energy exchange is there.

MarcyKate:    There's nothing like being in person, and been talking to actual kids, that's just the best talking to kids about books.

Mindy:     I love talking to kids. It’s my favorite.

MarcyKate:    And it's even more fun when they've read your book and they love it, and they're like, I want to hear about this character. And are you gonna write a book about this? Or are gonna do this?

Mindy:     Yeah, it's why I write. It's not the only reason. Really, a paycheck is nice. But just because of the nature of what I write, it reaches some kids that otherwise aren't going to be reached by books and usually by the content, I get a lot of rougher kids and they're the kids that need to have some sort of escape or something to do in their lives that is healthy and man, it's like if you're able to reach them, God, that's everything.

MarcyKate:   That's amazing, absolutely.

Mindy:    I will say, I wanna go back real quick to the Zoom question. Being extraordinarily famous does make a huge difference, I was in a Zoom with R L. Stine, and we had like 325 people. 

MarcyKate:   That's amazing.  

Mindy: It was like me, R L. Stine and I think two other authors, 'cause R L. Stine’s actually from Ohio, originally. And so it was an Ohio-based thing. Have you ever met him? 

MarcyKate:   I have not.

Mindy: Oh, okay, so because he is originally from Ohio, I've actually crossed paths with him multiple times and, oh my gosh, he's so kind. 

MarcyKate:   These are the circles you’re moving in. With RL Stine. That's so cool. 

Mindy: I have occasionally been in the same room as RL Stine, let's put it that way. But he's very kind, and when you hit RL Stine levels, it doesn't matter. You get 300 people in the Zoom.

MarcyKate:   I think it's harder for people who are like midlist or new authors, and just being on sub in the pandemic has been very strange too.

Mindy: I’ve heard that from other people. Is it just like long wait lines?

MarcyKate:   Everybody is so burned out, I mean, especially editors, they're trying to push these published books. It’s hard, it's 10 times harder than it was, and then trying to read and get new submissions, it's just... It seems like it's so much more difficult. And I've been on sub with one book for a year and a half, and we just sold it like two weeks ago. And then I have another book that's been on sub for  a year now, a picture book. We'll see if that ever happens. It’s my weirdly dark picture book for baby Goths. It's actually Poe inspired. I'm not complaining by any means. I totally understand I've been burned out too, so I think it's just kind of this mass burn out. 

Mindy: I've been hitting it pretty hard myself. It's a beautiful day today, and I'm doing this interview with you and I've got people coming on next, and then I am going outside for the rest of the day because it's like, I can't sit in front of my laptop anymore. 

MarcyKate:  Nice, nice. I  have to sit in front my laptop 'cause I have to work, but that's okay

Mindy: Oh I have to work. I'm just not doing it.

MarcyKate:   Good for you, that's awesome.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your books?

MarcyKate:   You can find me online at Marcy Kate dot com, if you can spell my name, you can find me... It's M-A-R-C-Y K-A-T-E dot com. All my books are listed there along with buy links. You can get my books from Bookshop dot org, from your local bookstore, or you can also get them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Pretty much anywhere. If you contact me through my website, you can request a bookmark and I'd be happy to send them to you. I hope people like to read my books, I write weird, dark children's books and middle grade. That's kind of my brand. 

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Fred Koehler On Experience, Inspiration and the Outdoors

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

Mindy:   We're here with Fred Koehler, who, apart from being an author himself and having quite a life full of misadventures and inspiration, also has a development program called Ready Chapter 1, for writers, and he also helps brands across the US tell their own story and runs a design studio, just a lot of different elements at work here with this guest to dive into and talk about different elements of writing and publishing and especially marketing. So let's start by you telling us a little bit about your life and just the various elements of your life that the rest of us probably haven't experienced.

Fred: I’m kind of woodsy, and I think I used to say the word redneck, but I don't know if that's derogatory or not anymore. My dad was an outdoorsman and we spent a lot of time camping and fishing, and I never got into the hunting or anything like that, but riding my bike barefoot and wading in the lakes and rivers, and there were alligators and all kinds of stuff creeping all around us, we didn't know. We were just kids. We were just kids growing up. When that kind of turned into me being an artist, I felt like that was a voice that I could pull from because not a lot of people had those kinds of experiences or not that I've encountered in the publishing industry have had those experiences, so... It's a neat perspective to be able to bring, and I know it's one that you've had as well.

Mindy: I grew up... Woodsy is a great way to put it. I'm still Woodsy, I live in the middle of nowhere. I'm in Ohio, so we don't have anything out here in nature that can kill us, no alligators or anything like that, but when I think about the things that I did as a child growing up there were just so stupid. Near death, most of the time. I thought I was having fun and I was, I was having a great time. I really love that, and I love that naivete of childhood where we're not worried all the time, we're just having fun, it's a beautiful thing.

Fred: That's an experience that is incredible to be able to put that energy and that curiosity and that imagination into books and into stories. But also I feel like it's part of our bigger mission is to create a world where kids still get to have that, or they still get to be kids. I wanna simultaneously live out my childhood throughout my entire life, but I also wanna create safe spaces for kids to have those same opportunities.

Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. Have you read The Last Child in the Woods?

Fred: No. That sounds good though.

Mindy: It's fascinating, it's called The Last Child in the Woods, and it's just about children growing up with absolutely no contact with nature, there's a certain unhappiness that can be tied to it. I know that whenever I'm not doing well, like mentally or whatever, it's like you gotta go outside, man.

Fred: Exactly, I'm in Central Florida, so I'm about 50 minutes, less than an hour from Tampa, a couple of hours to the East Coast. And we love both coasts, but if I can get my toes in the salt water, and I still do this today, I free dive and I Spearfish, and kayaking, and I go to the springs.

Mindy: So I'm from the Midwest, we hike all over the Midwest, and we found a spot in Kentucky that it's like an unofficial jump off the cliff into the water spot.

Fred: Oh my gosh, yes.

Mindy: We were participating in that and there weren't many people around and getting up that nerve to do something like that, of course, and then being like, That was awesome, I'm gonna do it again. And it's like re-capturing that feeling, 'cause you know I'm in my 40s and I'm like, I'm gonna jump off this cliff and I'm gonna see what happens. I was kind of like, Oh, I remember this, I remember this feeling.

Fred: Isn't that what we have to do? Screw up our courage? If you wanna put your work out there into the world, and I bet you have a lot of listeners who are breaking into the publishing industry and it's such a scary thing to be like, Okay, this story that I wrote, this thing that's so personal and so dear to my heart, if I put it out there into the world, what if something goes wrong? What if I don't hit the water? What if I belly-flop? I mean, there's so many analogies you could make.

Mindy: Oh yes. What if something goes wrong is basically how I think a lot of people live, which is fine, and they'll live a long time, and probably be healthier. I am a risk taker. There's no doubt. And it does hurt though. You can get hurt. This is a really good point. I was querying for 10 years, this was before, because before you couldn’t query with emails, we were doing self-addressed stamped envelopes. But it hurt. Every time you grow a callous, but man, rejections are still rejections, and I think that it's scary to take that stuff where you're trying to find an agent. But I actually do think that it is almost scarier that first time you're sharing something you wrote with someone, man, there's a vulnerability there, like you're saying it is like throwing yourself off that cliff or swimming with the crocodiles in Florida.

Fred: It’s alligators in Florida.

Mindy: I’m just very Midwest over here. We don’t have things that can kill us. I don’t know what yours are called.

Fred: I'm more afraid of the alligators that I am the sharks, they're all just trying to live their lives and be who they are, but you have to remember they are also wild animals with big pointy teeth. But they all hurt, When they clamp down.

Mindy: Yes, they do. Tell my listeners a little bit about your development program and your training program, which is called Ready Chapter 1.

Fred: This is literally a thing that happened because of covid, so much happened because of covid. I had a local writers group, when you're a writer, you wanna hang out with other writers, those are your people, that's your tribe. That's where you feel the least insane is when you're around people who think and act and have the same sort of vision and hopes as you do. So we were getting together with this writer's group, and people were coming from all over Central Florida just to meet and hang out and read some pages and talk about where they wanted to go with their writing and their creativity. And then covid happens, and it's like, Well, we can't meet any more. I wasn't ready to accept that as an ending to where I was seeing all of these folks elevate their craft. So I thought to myself, Well, you know what, if we use the same technology that I have to use for all the boring meetings that I go to for work, what if we could figure out a way to sort of bring that learning and that craft development into the virtual world? I basically invited nine of my friends who are extremely successful, either agents or editors or best-selling authors, and I was like, Will you guys each come and teach a class for me, and let's not just teach a class, let's make them consecutive.

So let's take the 10 most important elements of storytelling and teach them in the order you would need to know them to write a really, really good story. And lo and behold, they were like, sure I'll teach that class for you, and so now we've got... We're building and it's still in progress, but we've got a cohort of about 60 students who are going through this process where literally we've taken them from the idea, from the very concept of their story, and we're gonna end with a completed story and a query package that they're gonna be able to take out and submit their work out into the world. 

Mindy: Nice. A lot of people need that encouragement right from the beginning, because I know that when I was doing this, everything was kind of hush-hush and magical and behind closed doors, and you had to go to the book store and buy the Writer's Market guide to literary agents for that year. It blows my mind when I look around and I look at sites like yours, I'm just like, Oh my gosh, I feel like so much has been demystified, those barriers are coming down, the barriers to entry, but also just the barriers to knowledge, because I feel like the knowledge was very guarded for a long time.

Fred: Yeah, and I absolutely agree with that. And I spent 10 years wandering the deserts of publishing trying to figure stuff out, and I don't want other people to have that experience, and I just wanted the answers, I just wanted the information and I was willing to put in the work. Those are the types of folks who I feel are gonna be successful, so if you're listening to this and you are the type of person who's willing to put in the work, and you're hungry to elevate your craft and you're hungry to elevate your network... My guess is you are the type of person who's gonna be successful sooner in publishing than the folks who are looking for somebody to just hand them the answers.

Mindy: Absolutely. I had a conversation with my mother this past weekend because I was keynoting a festival, and they had asked me to speak about Why I Write the things that I write, 'cause I write dark stuff, I write for teens, but I write very dark, gray moral areas and things like that, it's what I like to explore. The people who are organizing it said, Hey, why don't you make your keynote about why do you write these things? Why do you like those things? I don't know, it's just who I am. And went over to my mom's and I just open up the old family scrapbooks to find pictures of families together on family outings and everybody's having fun, and then there's me, and I am clearly miserable and very unhappy. I'm in my head right now, I'm not having fun at the water park, everyone around us could drown... That's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about falling off this high slide and dying, I'm in a worst case scenario I'm four, And I'm like, We all die here. So yeah, I was a fun kid. Once I was in that mode, I was just like, I wasn't leaving it, it's like you're not going to convince me that I'm having fun.

I'm not having fun. I'm legitimately scared. I think I'm gonna die. The rest of you are naive to think that this is fun, I was a pretty unbearable child. And my mom would get so upset and she would be like, Mindy, you're so stubborn once you're thinking anything or you're convinced of something, you don't let it go. It doesn't matter. All evidence to the contrary. You're not gonna let it go. You're stubborn, and my grandmother told her, she's not stubborn, she's determined, and that is going to be a wonderful quality for her to have. And my mother was telling me this story in the car this weekend, and I was like, You know, if I wasn't determined, there's no way I would make it in publishing. There's no way. The only reason I'm good at what I'm good at is because I don't quit.

Fred: Exactly, exactly. And it's so interesting that you brought that up. My day job is in animations, I work for an animation studio as a writer. They made me do a personality profile before they would hire me. I was the only person in the entire hundred person organization who was 100% Green, and basically what it meant was that my super power was determination, but there was also a flip side of that, and when you flip the thing over the Achilles heel is stubbornness. And so I think there are two sides of the same coin, and it's literally like, how you are when you're at your best and how you respond when you're at your worst. So that's something for both of us to keep in mind is that when we're highly stressed out we will be stubborn.

Mindy: Oh yes, absolutely. And you will not move me, even if I know I'm wrong, I will argue to explain how I know that I'm wrong, but I'm still not budging.

Fred: Okay, so give me an example of how that has served you in publishing.

Mindy: Just that length of time, those 10 years of querying, you are being rejected for 10 years. You're having someone say, No, you're not good enough. No, this doesn't work. No, no, no, no, we don't want you. Right? For 10 years. And instead of absorbing that as, you really aren't good enough, you really can't make this... You can't do this. So this is where I was determined, but not stubborn. I think if you're stubborn, you're thinking - screw you... You're missing out. No, I was determined to absorb that feeling and get better because I needed to. I was rejected for 10 years for good reason - I was not good enough. I had to write four more books before I was good enough, but I was determined to get better and to do it, and to break in, there was an edge to it of, Yes, I will make this, I will get in here. This is the only thing I've wanted to do with my entire life, this was my life’s goal from a very young age. This is what I wanted. Like you, I had No connections. I’m a Farmer's Daughter from Ohio. I'm doing this on my own. Not only do I have to climb this ladder on my own, I have to make the ladder.

All of it is on me. I did it because I wasn't going to quit. And I do dislike in many ways, when people say, Never quit, don't quit. I do think it is okay to quit for a small period of time because you can't hit your head against a brick wall ‘til the point where you have a concussion and keep going. You have to stop, let the concussion heal and then come back to the brick wall and start hitting your head against it again.

Fred: I like that analogy, and then I probably have some scars on my forehead from that process, I think we all do. You're exactly right. Those are the folks who are gonna find success, I love to meet people like that through the program, those are the people that I've been able to give scholarships to. I didn't wanna make cost a barrier to anybody to participate, so it's like... Just write me a note and tell me how excited you are about your career and how passionate you are and what you think, and how you think you can change the world by becoming a better storyteller. And literally, I gave so many people a free ride to this program because I could see myself reflected in them. I wanna root for every single person who feels that way, it feels like you just described.

I wanna talk about writing. It's so refreshing just to get to talk to another writer and hear their stories and hear their struggles. Have you seen the effects, fallout from the pandemic in the industry? 'cause I feel like I have everywhere.

Mindy: So the most obvious right now, which is a real thorn in my side, is the paper shortage. It's bad.

Fred: Printing fewer books?

Mindy: Printing fewer books and literally running out of them. So I had a book come out in March and my new releases are fine, so... That's great, but I don't give up on my back list. I have, I think, 12 books out now, and when I travel, I promote all of them. I will speak primarily about my newest books, and then I'm like, and these are my other books, because I wrote them, I don't care if they came out 10 years ago, they still matter to me and I'm still promoting them. So I would be promoting books and people literally can't get them. I was at a school visit, and in some ways it was on the school... 'cause two weeks before my visit, they said, Hey, we wanna buy a copy of your book for every single seventh grader... That's amazing. Of course, I will sign them. And then they got back to me and they were like, Hey, we can't get them. They don't exist, and I got a hold of my publisher, And they don't have 350 Copies of that, and we can't get them printed, we can't make that happen.

Fred: All the frustrating things about the industry, which again goes back to that whole thing about determination, stubbornness. I found during the pandemic that everything I sent out for querying just kind of felt like it disappeared into the ether, what used to be a week turned into months and then a lot of times… crickets. I was just like, Oh well, maybe my work isn't good enough anymore, maybe they don't wanna publish my books anymore. Come to find out that's not necessarily true, it's just like it feels like the industry has done a reset and it's on us to figure out what these shifts are and how we need to adjust and pivot just to be able to be successful.

Mindy: Yeah, I agree with that. I have found that because I write for teenagers, I have to be in front of them. They aren't showing up to Zooms, they don't care. And it is an interesting facet of being a young adult author, people outside of teens think of them as always being on their phones, they're always on their phones, they're always on the computer, they're always looking at a screen. And that's true for certain areas, if they're gonna do homework, they want a computer, they want a phone, if they're gonna obviously social media and texting their friends, all that stuff, it's phone, phone, phone. But what's really interesting is when it's not - they're out. They don't read ebooks. Teenagers do not read  ebooks, they want physical books. And it's true about interacting with authors. When I do anything online, it's adults that show up. I don't get kids. When I have people in my social media feeds, 95% of the time, it's adults. The kids want a person in front of them. And I think that's super refreshing, but that is something I always believed, and then I learned it very, very strongly in the pandemic. Because I would do virtual events anything, anybody wanted - Yes, of course, I'll do it. And three people show up. I'm starting to go back out on tour and things like that, and of course it's a school, so it's a captive audience, but I'll have 300 kids in an auditorium and at least half of them come up to buy books or to talk or to get a selfie. So yeah, for me, it was a really big re-understanding of something that I already knew that the teen audience wants to interact with you in a legitimate way, they don't want that screen in between you and them.

Fred: Yeah, it makes such good sense. So my books are middle grade and picture books, I experience those kids even less through any sort of digital way, if it's not an in-person event. They're not gonna sit on mom and dad's lap to show a Zoom. I haven't done a school visit since the pandemic, all my author friends like they're starting to get back out into the world. I know it's gonna get better, I know we're gonna come out of this, but I feel like as writers who have to promote. Sometimes you have on your introvert hat, you get to be the introverted person sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, writing the story. And sometimes you have where you’re a promoter and where you're out in the world talking about your books, that shift is gonna shake up the industry a little bit as we come out of the pandemic.

Mindy: The introvert extrovert hat is a real thing, and I can very, very powerfully be both, and I enjoy that dichotomy about myself. When I do school visits, I'm always trying to be partially just entertaining, you know what that's like. It's like you have to keep their attention. Selling me and selling the books are two different things, right? But if I can sell myself to you, then you'll buy the books. 

Fred: What advice can we give to your listeners that help point them along their journey, and you've done enough of these that you've probably got stuff that you say over and over again. So what do you say over and over again? What do you wanna underscore for your listeners

Mindy: If you wanna be a writer, you have to be a reader. You must read. Having classes and things like yours available are absolutely amazing. I didn't have access to any of that. I learned how to write entirely by reading, I grew up in a not artsy place, I never had a single instructional moment of writing my entire life, I learned to write by reading, and that's what I tell people like If you can't write... For whatever reason, if it's not there today, if you're hurting, whatever is going on, if you can't write, be reading.

Fred: I love that advice. That's so good. Well, I think what I'll add to that is get out there into the world and having the experiences. For both of us, as outdoorsy people, it's second nature to be away from the civilized world. It's also the way that I get story ideas is by going out and having really dumb adventures. Think of the things that you want to know how to do, that have always sounded exciting and interesting to you, and then just give yourself permission to go try it. Whatever it is, whether it's sky diving or hiking or Botany... I don't know, but whatever it is, just by going through that experience you'll have the memories and then sort of the physical recall to put into the details of your story, and it's gonna make it that much stronger.

Mindy: My last three books exist because I go outside and I had a single moment, an event, a thing that happened, there was a seed that grew into a novel. And if I was the person that sat inside and tried to come up with ideas, was an idea generator, those books wouldn't exist

Fred: Since we were talking about Ready Chapter 1, I will give you a coupon code or your listeners, anything that's gonna help them get themselves going and get them motivated, it would be a pleasure to just introduce them that way into the program.

Mindy: That's awesome, well, thank you so much. Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online, but also your books and where they can find your program, Ready Chapter 1?

Fred: Let's start with a book. So I used to be able to say, anywhere books are sold, and it seems like that's harder to get onto the bookstore shelves these days in the physical store. So a lot of them are through online retailers, and I always suggest that you support your local indie book store. My best known books are probably Garbage Island, which is a middle grade novel about animals stuck on the Great Pacific garbage patch. And then One Day, The End which is a picture book about the adventures a little girl has just in her own backyard, and then the way she tells that story of her experiences. My personal website is I like Fred dot com and that's where I have all of the books listed there, and ways to contact me and get in touch, and the program is Ready Chapter 1 dot com, and that's the numeral one. So Ready Chapter 1 dotcom.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Charise Harper On Her Graphic Novel To Help Middle Graders With Embarrassment

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: So I'm here with Charise Mericle Harper, who's the author of So Embarrassing: Awkward Moments and How to Get Through Them, which is a nonfiction graphic novel for middle graders. So first of all, as a former high school library and I have to say how fantastic this is, what a wonderful idea. I mean, we all know that your early teen years are so difficult, so this is just wonderful. I think to have this book to show kids how to deal with those moments because we're all gonna have them.

Charise: Absolutely. We're all gonna have them. And thanks for inviting me to talk about it. I do want to say that it's not completely nonfiction, certain elements of it are made up, silly stories, and some of these silly stories don't happen to real people. But if they did well, then they're prepared because they read the book. So basically, the reason why I wanted to make the book was for the exact reason that you said is that kids are so sensitive in middle school to their peers if they know that other people are suffering, too, it just makes you feel a little bit better that you know you're not alone because I think sometimes you just feel like the spotlight is directly on you. And that was the case, even though it feels like it's the case. 

Mindy: Absolutely, it does. And I also think that, like it's really important a lot of time, the kids that are a little more, have struggled a little more with self esteem or perhaps aren't the most popular kids. They feel like those embarrassing moments only happened to them, but they happen to everyone. Having some of these possible events and situations illustrated in a graphic novel is just wonderful. So can you tell us an example of one of the embarrassing moments that is in the book? 

Charise: Some of these were taken from things that have actually happened to me in the past. There is a scenario in the book where somebody calls somebody by the wrong name, and instead of correcting the person directly that they have their name wrong. This is the character is Gary, and by mistake, they call him Barry. Instead of Gary saying, Well, you know, I'm sorry, my name's Gary, he lets it go. This can snowball into something that is really hard to deal with later, in the sense that Gary/Barry is introduced to other people by his incorrect name. So now there's more than one person that knows him as Barry. And so what does he do with this situation when suddenly all these people know him as Barry and his name's not Barry, and now he hasn't said anything about it, which is even more embarrassing than if he had said something in the beginning. It just snowballs into that kind of situation. 

And the same thing happened with this cafe that I go to all the time. I knew the owner, uh, from going there all the time. And he did call me Charice. I think the first couple times I went in there when we first moved here. But then somehow he changed my name and it became, Hey, Clarisse, how's it going? And I was taken aback like Oh my gosh, I felt weird because he'd already pronounced my name properly the first couple times, and now he was calling me something different, so I didn't know what to say. But then every subsequent time I didn't say anything, and every time I walked in there, I had this anxiety about Oh my God, he's going to say my name wrong, and he would be so happy to see me, they would call me Clarisse! Hey, how's it going today? 

And then the other people that worked there knew my name. And so it became the situation where they knew I wasn't saying anything to him, and he was calling me the wrong name. And I just started going to another cafe because I couldn't deal with it. And I just felt so bad, you know, after, like, a couple months, I went back there and he had my name correctly, but it was just... He knew that I hadn't said anything. I was just like, Oh, my gosh, this is like, so embarrassing. I’m an adult. I should know better than this. And the lesson is, you just have to really deal with this thing right away, because otherwise it becomes something so much bigger, that you have to now circumvent your regular habits to deal with this situation, and it just takes up more of your life. So much better to make a joke about it and handle it right away. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I'm really glad you bring names and confusing people or their names up because that's a problem that continues like into adult life, and it is kind of a difficult one to handle. I know that as a fellow author, when I'm doing signings, I'll have a face coming through the line. And because I worked at a high school for almost 15 years, I have, you know, 15 years worth of students out there that all expect me to remember their name, right? And it's like I don't. I simply don't. I found a little trick. 

Fellow authors, if you are involved in that type of situation, especially if you're a teacher or worked with the public in some way, when I have a kid come through that I know (of course they're adults now), but if I have one come through and it's like I know I know this person and I know they were student, but I cannot remember their name. And of course I'm personalizing a book for them. I look up and I say, Hey, it's so great to see you again. Remind me what's your last name? And they'll tell me their last name. And most of the time my memory can fill in their first name. What’s bad is when they're like it's Miller and I'm like, Okay, yeah, I can't fill in that one, right? And I'll just be like, Okay, so then the other resort that I go to is, “remind me how to spell your first name.” 

Because especially with a name like Rebecca or Mallia or Michaela is one - there's so many different ways that I can get away with that. But I did have an incident just like a month ago, and it was actually one of the organizer's that I had been in contact with for a couple of months, getting the event set up. Her name had simply slipped my mind once she came through the line to have her book signed. And I was like, Okay, like, remind me how to spell your name. Just so I know, I get it right And she said, Oh, it's Peg. And I was just like, Yeah, of course it is. Of course it's Peg, you dumb ass, Mindy. I was just like, Okay,  I didn't know if you wanted it to be Peggy or, you know, whatever she's like. No, I go by Peg and I'm like, “Okay, good job! Good recovery keep going.” But like as an adult with these things don't stop. Like you can still have these situations happen as an adult.

Charise: Obviously, my story illustrates you're not any better at dealing with it. It happens to everybody, but the great thing about embarrassment is that it is something everybody shares. stories from embarrassing moments. It's a great way to connect with people. I think it's a great icebreaker. If everybody shares an embarrassing story, suddenly you're right there with the people who have similar stories to share, and it just makes us feel like, Okay, we're all human. We're all dealing with this. 

And I went to a dinner party and it was a bunch of families that didn't know each other. A bunch of ranges of kids that were, you know, teenagers and younger and we were all asked to write on the card our embarrassing story that we wanted to share with the group. But as we went through, I mean, the kids were just so excited about sharing their embarrassment stories and my kids said stuff that I didn't even know what happened to them, you know, just like amazing. It's really something that people want to talk about, but there's no way to talk about it unless you call it out. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I think another lesson here, too, especially for kids. And I know that sometimes it's really hard if your a parent to get your kid to realize that you were their age once too. And I think maybe sharing your own stories is a wonderful way to help your own biological children, or perhaps if you work with kids in some capacities or either as an author, a writer, a teacher, a library in whatever the case may be, it helps to see --  you know you'll be okay. You'll remember this and one day you will laugh about it. 

I remember my senior year, so this would have been late nineties. The National Honor Society was invited on a trip to D. C. And we had a really cool schedule, and we actually got to go in the Pentagon. Of course, this was all pre 911 and we were able to go into the Pentagon because one of our students’ uncles worked there, so we got to tour the Pentagon and we were waiting to get security clearance so that we could go in and there was an entire West Point cadets class waiting for the same thing. And of course, they're all like at attention and wearing their uniforms and looking, you know, they're all, like, basically our age and mostly male, very attractive. 

One of my best friends walked over to say something to me, and, of course, we're in civilian clothes, and we have been asked to dress up to visit the Pentagon. So she's wearing a dress and a skirt and she trips over someone's book bag and just face first down in the hall in the Pentagon, in front of an entire class of West Point cadets. And her skirt flies up, you know, underwear up in the air, everything. And of course, we were like, Oh my God, we all help her back up. And she I mean, she wanted to die. Her face was so red, like she had to cry like it was horrible. Meanwhile, all these West Point cadets are trying so hard to keep their faces straight because, like they're at attention. She can laugh about it now. She could laugh about it now, but it took some time, right?

Charise:  Absolutely. And actually, when I was doing some research for this book, they've done some experiments that there is sort of this innate desire for people to laugh at somebody falling down. That's kind of hard wired. It's not out of menace or it's not out of trying to punish the person that fell down. It's just something that's that's absolutely hardwired in our system. People falling down is, I guess we have to say it's funny and unfortunately, not funny for the person that fell. And when that happens to you and that obviously happened to me, I mean, it is, and I blush to, like, incredibly, at the slightest thing. Um, it's really hard to deal with, and so one of the ways that you can sort of try to get your mind off of it - because what your mind is doing is replaying this loop of what just happened over and over again. 

Try to think of something else, and the way to do that is to have something to go to already. If I'm gonna be embarrassed, I'm going to count down from 10 to 1, 15 times in a row and so that you already know before you ever get embarrassed, that's where you're going. And I have a stupid little poem that I say to myself. So if I'm trying to get my mind off of that loop once you're not thinking about that continuously, you can help yourself sort of breathe more regular and get yourself calmed down. But unless you prepare yourself before it happens in that moment, you can't find a place to go to. 

You know, even if you think I'm never gonna be embarrassed, just think. If I was embarrassed, what should I do? Maybe I'll say that silly poem I know. Or maybe I'll do the lyrics to that song. Try to say them really slowly or I'll do some counting just so that you could maybe click into it if it happens to you. And I think that it is nice to have something in your hand that you can hold onto as a safety, you know, if you get in trouble. 

Mindy: I think that's fascinating what you were saying about the knee jerk reaction to laugh when someone falls down. Can you tell us about any more any kind of research that you did for this book then? Because I am, I am fascinated at some of the different kinds of less well known areas that you ventured into in order to write this book.

Charise: I tried to just research embarrassment, and in general, one of the most interesting things I came across was when I talked this clinical therapist, and I didn't know this, she said - Embarrassment is something you do to yourself. What do you mean by that? I mean, No. It's something that happens to me and she said, No, you decide to be embarrassed. I'm not saying it's your fault, but it's your choice to be embarrassed. And it is a social construct to have people be embarrassed, because what happens is we are part of the social community, and as middle schoolers or kids in school, they are part of a smaller social community, and within that community there's peer pressure to behave in a certain way. 

And so scientists said that we're hardwired to conform to that peer pressure because we want to stay as part of that society and our innate desire to not be embarrassed and to not step out of what we're supposed to do keeps us in that social environment. And so knowing that, you sort of feel like, well, you're not really thinking about, Should I be doing this, or should I be doing that? You are, in a sense, hardwired to behave in a certain way based on the social community, you’re part of, and that keeps us behaving as citizens of the world and in our communities. If you're in middle school, you have the way you act at school and then you have the way you act at home and then you have the way you act in a broader community of where you live, and then you have the way you act in your town and then just keeps going and going, and all these add elements to the way you behave. I found that really interesting, that biological reason to behave in a certain way, and the outcome of that is that we have social systems that work and that we're not constantly having To inform people that they're misbehaving because we're hardwired ourselves to behave appropriately.

Mindy: Our social contracts that we have with one another are a very interesting system construct if you, when you look into it some of the codified methods of behavior and interaction that we don't realize that we are actively participating in yet we are every day. One other thing that I want to ask you about that I think, is really interesting and useful both for young teens and young adults and adults. Are there any methods in this book about how to help someone else with an embarrassing moment? Because I know I myself really as a teen and and especially as a middle grader. I was just fairly mortified all the time, like constantly worried about looking dumb or saying the wrong thing. And just over the course of maturation I kind of moved past that, of course, not entirely. As you know, I just told you about a story last month where I had an embarrassing moment, but I've just kind of learned To let him slide. They're gonna happen. I'm sure that I will mess up amazingly again soon, more than likely, but I find myself, because I have reached a point where I'm more comfortable with my own social gaffes that when I see someone else like struggling or if I see him, someone having a bad moment, I always find a way to make them feel better. Try to like, usually by denigrating myself. 

I go to the gym a lot, but I didn't used to. And I remember coming into the gym, not knowing the people there, not knowing the social network there and not being able to do a pull up. Sometimes, if a pull up is part of the workout in the class, it's really embarrassing to be the person that raises your hand and says, I can't do that. Can I have a substitute movement? And so when I see someone kind of blanche, when they see a pull up in the workout, I'll just kind of walk out and be like, Hey, or you know, you're worried about the pull ups or don't feel bad. It took me five years before I could do even one and, you know, give them a substitute movement. So do you have any tips or tricks for especially middle graders about how to help others when they have their own moments of struggle? 

Charise: What you just said, I think you have to share something that happened to you, too, or you know, it's like it's not so bad. It's the time, you know, I fell down too and that's really what this book is about. It's about sharing your story, to make others feel better, because there is no real trick to help somebody instantly feel better. The biggest power we have is to share our own story and by sharing our own story, they're not alone anymore. Not being alone. There are tips to like, you know how to calm yourself down if you're blushing and how to try to get your heart rate back to normal and things like that. But I feel like in an embarrassing moment. The biggest thing is that inner voice in your head that it's saying that this is the worst thing that has ever happened. That is a normal feeling, and at that moment everybody feels that feeling. 

But this is actually what's going on. And the truth is, people don't care about you as much as you think they do, in the sense that they’re not thinking about you every moment of the day, it's not like they're talking about you every moment of the day. I mean with social media you think they might be, but it's not. People don't care about other people as much as or the mistakes that other people make, as much as the person who made the mistake is thinking that they do. In your mind, you can create these stories that are so much bigger than what actually happened. And certainly in middle school that can happen to exponential amounts. But the truth is that people aren't spending their whole day talking about the time you tripped in the hallway. To you, It's gonna last for days. That's the big difference in who's looking, and I Think sharing is really the strongest weapon we have against embarrassment.

Mindy: I love your point, too, about being uber aware of your own situation and not necessarily realizing that it isn't as prevalent to everyone else. I had author Matt Haig on the show a couple of weeks ago. He is a British novelist, and he has written multiple fiction but also some nonfiction, and one of his books called Notes on a Nervous Planet is all about anxiety of modern life, and he has a wonderful line in there that I just highlighted because I loved it so much and he said, Don't worry about what you look like. Other people don't care. They're worried about what they look like. Absolutely. I'm 40 years old and I read that line and I was like, I never thought of that before. 

You know, I want to bring up something that you just mentioned. We've been talking about embarrassing moments in real life and in front of people. But what about those embarrassing moments on social media, which obviously is a huge area of concern, especially for teenagers today, right?

Charise: I purposefully didn't delve into social media that much because I don't have the knowledge. But one thing I did talk about in the book waas, especially on Instagram, the prevalence of likes and how you like something research on that when you get A like you have this shot of dopamine going into your system, that is like, Oh, this a positive thing. It's like addicting, having a little hit of chocolate or something. And so you become addicted to, You know the pings on your phone saying that people like you. But the interesting part of that is that they've done some studies, the exact same image on Instagram from what would be a random person that nobody knew if the image had already amassed, you know, in excess of like 1000 likes versus an image that only had five likes people were more likely to like the image that already had 1000 likes 

They don't know who the person is. They are just going to go with what everybody else liked. We are part of that social construct again. We're trying to be like everybody else. A lot of that is people just seeing other people liking it, so they like it, too. And it doesn't mean that they really like it. It just means that, okay, I want to be part of the group. So I'm gonna click it. That's interesting in that you cannot define yourself by how popular are are on social media, because there's so many elements that are playing into it that you have absolutely no control over absolutely so.

Mindy: Very true. And it really does lend way too much power to social media which already has more than it needs in our lives. Yeah, for sure. I just want to add that again, The book is called So Embarrassing: Awkward Moments and How to Get Through Them. It releases November 10th. It is a graphic novel for middle grade readers. And would you like to let our listeners know where people can find you online? 

Charise: Absolutely. They confined me at my name, which is Charice Harper dot com, And that's my website, and there's links to everything on there, and I'm on Instagram and Facebook. Not so much, but I hope that kids enjoy it. I really do. I think if I read this book when I was a kid, I feel like that would have been somewhat helpful. So That's my push. 

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at  Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.