Writers with Wrinkles - Season 2 Finale: Reflections, Laughs, and Lessons Learned

In our season finale, Beth McMullen and Lisa Schmid take a stroll down memory lane, sharing laughs, insights, and valuable lessons from the year 2023. Join us for a quick journey through our favorite episodes, guest highlights, and the wisdom we've gathered along the way. Perfect for aspiring authors, seasoned writers, and literary enthusiasts alike, this episode is a treasure trove of inspiration and practical advice.

Mentioned in This Episode:
- "Writing Spooky Middle Grade Fiction" episode
- Guest appearances: Jennifer March-Soloway, Kathleen Schmidt, Leslie Zampetti, Elizabeth Eulberg, Eric Smith
- Topics: Querying agents, publishing processes, handling reviews, collaborating in the literary industry

- Join our conversation on Threads at @WritersWithWrinkles

Special Year End Thanks:
A heartfelt thank you to all our guests and listeners  for making this season so fun. Your support, feedback, and engagement have been the backbone of our journey.

Upcoming:
Stay tuned for Season 3, kicking off on January 8th with marketing expert Kathleen Schmidt, and more exciting guests and topics to come!

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Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:30

Hello, lovely listeners, authors, aspiring writers and everyone in between. I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is our last original episode for season two and for the year 2023. And, honestly, when we started this little podcast Boondoggle, I didn't think we'd make it out of 2022. And now look at us.

Lisa Schmid: 0:53

You know what I knew we would.

Beth McMullen: 0:57

Lisa has the confidence and I'm the cynic. That's how we roll.

Lisa Schmid: 1:00

You know what? No, that's not true. That was not it. I knew that we would keep going because you are, you have dogged determination.

Beth McMullen: 1:09

What she's saying is that I'm a taskmaster, that's what she's saying. She's trying to be polite, but underneath that politeness, she thinks that I'm a taskmaster. That's okay. Somebody's got to crack the whip around here.

Lisa Schmid: 1:22

You know what you do. An amazing job you really do. I mean, I look at everything you do and if people could see me, I would be bowing down right now too.

Beth McMullen: 1:32

The amazing thing is how much of this podcasting nonsense we have figured out, because when we started I'm an avid podcast listener but I knew nothing about how you make one At least I knew nothing about how you make one. So we have literally been like tripping and stumbling down the path to where we are now and we've learned quite a number of things.

Lisa Schmid: 1:55

Well, we have, starting with the fact that we need to introduce ourselves.

Beth McMullen: 2:00

That's like my favorite mistake, I know, and that it literally took us something like 60 plus episodes to figure out that we had never introduced ourselves. And what's really funny is that after that episode where we finally did, I got a comment I think it was on Spotify from a listener who was like I could never tell you guys apart until you finally said who you were.

Lisa Schmid: 2:26

Well, I think I've mentioned that I feel like we've morphed into each other.

Beth McMullen: 2:30

I know we're becoming one.

Lisa Schmid: 2:31

Well, there's sometimes I, when I'm listening, I'm like, is that me or is that Beth and you? And it's funny because you have a very distinct way of talking. You carry out sometimes you'll carry out your last syllable A little drag, you drag.

Beth McMullen: 2:47

It's like you want to be Australian. I would love to be Australian. I love the way they speak. It sounds so much cooler than the way we speak. But that's an aside, that's just my little thing.

Lisa Schmid: 2:58

I want to be British, so I get it.

Beth McMullen: 3:01

We can just all join the you know the empire. So this is our last episode. So we're you know we're fresh out of really cool stuff to share with you. So we were just going to run down a few of the episodes from the past year that have been really awesome, call out a few names and hopefully that will inspire you to go back and listen to some of these episodes, if you joined us later in the year or you missed some of them or you know something like that. Like because it's it's shocking, we have well over 75 or 80 episodes at this point, which just boggles my mind. But then I look at podcasts who are like this is our 1,000th episode and I'm like, oh God.

Lisa Schmid: 3:46

I know Well and I also look at how much we've learned along the way and I'm almost cringey to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. I totally hear you on that. Remember that one episode and this is a lesson I learned is the one episode where it was a books on Botox and I was talking about the line, the witch and the wardrobe and I was in the midst of an emotional crisis and so I just sounded like I was rambling, and I've learned never to do a podcast if I'm not in a great space, and so there's been times now where, if I'm having an issue or something, I'll just say I can't do it right now.

Beth McMullen: 4:28

I think it's true because it comes through in your voice and it also you do have to concentrate on what you're going to say and paying attention, and you can't drift away into your own emotional chaos when you're doing this, because then the episode gets really messed up, like there's definitely a technique to it that we have clearly been refining over the months and years now. So hopefully on the listener's end they're like oh yeah, it's getting better.

Lisa Schmid: 4:58

Or they're like huh, I know, I hope that people start like if they're just now discovering us, that they just get past some of the earlier ones that I just feel Right Jump, right to 2023.

Beth McMullen: 5:12

Ok, so actually here's a good place to start if you're going to jump into the show. One of our most popular episodes was from July 17, 2023, which was a top five deep dive into writing spooky middle grade fiction. People went crazy for that one. Isn't that funny they did Very popular. Yeah, it was really popular. People loved it. I like that. That was one where we talked about starting with a great hook, keeping your pace fast, building suspense and using humor and all of the things that are important to a middle grade spooky story. I love hearing that. I know that one was really popular. I have all the episodes up right now with all of the details about which ones got the most downloads. So that was a really popular one. Jennifer March-Soloa was enormously popular. She's an agent and she gave some unbelievable tips on how to get your manuscripts ready to send to an agent. That was a really good one. If you're just starting out looking for an agent, highly recommend listening to that one.

Lisa Schmid: 6:22

She's fabulous. During that whole episode. I was just there's times when I'm listening to our guests talk and I think, oh my gosh, everybody needs to hear this. Yeah, I know. And you want to scream it from the rooftops, and she was one of those guests where I was like, oh, every queering agent needs to hear this.

Beth McMullen: 6:43

Uh-huh, yes, every queering, queering. Author.

Lisa Schmid: 6:46

Yeah.

Beth McMullen: 6:47

I felt that way with our. We just recorded an episode which you guys won't hear until season three, which starts in January 8, with Kathleen Schmidt, who is a marketing guru for publishing, and she was kind of blowing my mind, so you're going to want to listen to that one. That will be our first episode for our new season, so I'm looking forward to that.

Lisa Schmid: 7:08

And I can hardly wait for people to hear Kathleen speak. She's she offered up some really interesting nuggets of wisdom in regards to where people should be focusing their time and efforts but, more importantly, where they shouldn't be focusing their time and efforts when it comes to social media, and I will be picking her up on that advice. It's. It was good advice.

Beth McMullen: 7:29

She had really good advice. I was super impressed with the stuff that she was saying because it was stuff that was actionable, that you could fold into your existing process pretty easily and just getting some clarity on what works in marketing and what doesn't. You know what, if you spend a lot of time doing this as opposed to that, you're going to get really poor results. So put your energies elsewhere, which I think is something we all need to hear.

Lisa Schmid: 8:00

One of my favorite episodes and of course I'm biased is with Leslie Sam Petty with open book literary and she's my agent and I just want to give a shout out to her because she is. You know, you hear all these you know agent horror stories, things that have happened, or how people get ghosted or their agents not responsive or they find out that their agents never been subbing Like. You hear all these crazy stories and there's, you know, always the good and the bad, but Leslie is a good egg. She's always there for me, she's super responsive. Like if I send an email, she's like back to me within like half an hour, 45 minutes, if she. You know, I had an issue recently and she jumped right in. You know we had an hour long phone call. She managed it, she followed up, she took care of all my problems. When we're on sub, she's like she's my champion.

Lisa Schmid: 8:48

And I remember one time when I first signed with her and I had nothing out yet you know she was, you know, subbing my chapter book and I was upset about something I can't even remember what it was and she called me like three times during the day, like I didn't realize she was calling me and finally I picked up and I'm like, oh my God, my agent's been trying to call me all day and she the only reason she was calling me was just to check in and say, hey, how are you doing? What's going on? And she's like that all the time. She'll, you know, she'll call me and sometimes she'll just text me with something that's going on that she thinks would that would be good for me or that would um is of interest. So in like just now I got an email checking in for you know the end of the year and what our plans are for next year. So she's very much partner and you know she's. She's that gal that you want in your corner.

Beth McMullen: 9:38

Yeah, we are rebroadcasting her episode on Christmas day, so Christmas day and New Year's day will have episodes that have been run on the show previously, and Leslie's will be on the 25th, so you can either go find it, because it's already out there, or it will show up in your feed regardless, because we're going to rebroadcast it because it has so many important things that you should know, especially when you're staring down a new year and maybe you have set some sort of goals for yourself for this year. So if you're listening to that episode will definitely help you out. Another one that was really popular this year was Elizabeth Yolberg, who writes YA, middle grade and, I think, everything else. She lives in London. She did this crazy visa that it's like an artist visa and she moved to London and she's like walking around being inspired by London all the time. So we had a really fun conversation with her. We also had some good advice on how to handle reviews so that you don't end up, you know, catatonic in the corner crying all day long. So that's a good one.

Beth McMullen: 10:42

That was in October 2023.

Lisa Schmid: 10:45

Best advice with reviews is just not to go read them and don't go to good reads Exactly, yes, good reads, bad, bad reads I think we rename it Bad Reads.

Beth McMullen: 10:56

It is Bad Reads.

Lisa Schmid: 10:57

I think we already renamed it Bad Reads in an earlier episode, because there's nothing good about it.

Beth McMullen: 11:02

I want to rename it something else, but this is a PG rated show, so I can't say it here. But you guys know what I mean it's not good, it gets you nothing, it doesn't sell books and it crushes your soul, so why on earth would you ever go there? You know, yeah, another really popular one that we had was from March or no, excuse me May of 2023. That was Erin Pascal, who's the senior editor at Andrews McMeal. People loved that one. It was a big one. She had lots of good advice on the book publishing process that I think resonated with a lot of readers who feel like it's a big unknown.

Beth McMullen: 11:40

So, okay, that's a rundown of some of the ones that we really liked this year that you guys also liked. If you're new to the show, those are some good ones to go and listen to. I made a little list of things that I have learned doing the show, because while you guys are hearing all the cool stuff that our authors and marketing specialists and publishing insiders are talking about, we're learning too. Here's my number one Reading is the most important thing that you can do for your writing craft, and that one I get from Lisa, who's the champion of this, and so many of our guests say it If you're going to write, you've got to read. It's just as simple as that.

Lisa Schmid: 12:25

It's true. There was a gal I just saw on Twitter the other day that she said that she'd just written this book. I think it was a middle grade and it took her so many years and when she went to Query they were asking for comps and from the last five years. I started writing this three or four years ago and I haven't been reading because I didn't want to feel like I was stealing somebody else's idea and I didn't even know what books were my comps and I just thought, okay, that's your biggest mistake. Right there I was going to say something and then an agent chimed in and was like, okay, that's, your biggest mistake is not reading. So, yeah, reading is key.

Beth McMullen: 13:01

The next thing I have on my list of things that I've learned is that, from listening to all the authors, every journey to publication is different. Respect yours, but also don't be afraid to take lessons from the people that we've talked about, things that they do that you think might work for you. You can't get so stuck in your process that you can't absorb new information that makes your process better. So I've thought a lot about that, because I've been working on this new adult novel manuscript and I've tried a lot of new things, a lot of which have come from the people that we've talked about, who've said you know, I do this and this is the result that I get. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but I think you have to be willing to give it a try, see what happens, especially if you've been writing for a long time and you can get kind of stuck.

Beth McMullen: 13:57

Third one collaboration comes in many different forms. We have heard so many cool stories about collaborating between authors, with illustrators, with other people in the industry, that I don't think there's any one right way to do it. You know, everybody seems to have their own process. So I think if you're considering a collaboration with somebody, what seems to travel through all of these different people's experiences is that you need to be really clear, upfront about what the roles are for your collaboration. Number four on my list we've already covered this a little, but number four is Goodreads is Stupid.

Lisa Schmid: 14:41

Wow, that made the list. That's awesome. That's it. Those are my four things.

Beth McMullen: 14:46

And Goodreads is stupid Made the list because it is and I want, if you get nothing else out of today's episode, step away from your Goodreads. You don't need it. It does nothing for you.

Lisa Schmid: 14:57

So funny. I actually posted that my book was on Goodreads and I only kind of like half-heartedly did it because everybody else was doing it. I'm like I should probably do it, but I don't, like I don't even go on there very much Like I'll, you know, go on if somebody wants me to add it to their like, something added to their list, or whatever. I'll always do that for somebody, but it's just not someplace and I, you know, I don't do readers actually go there looking for reviews. I just don't think readers are going to those places to find out where they what book they want to read next. I just you know.

Beth McMullen: 15:32

I think people go there now just to spread, you know, toxicity around. I don't. I never hear stories about joy coming out of Goodreads.

Lisa Schmid: 15:42

I, you know what I have? Not either I've never heard a joyful story. It's always been doom and gloom.

Beth McMullen: 15:48

Okay, my, my resolution for 2024 is that I'm not spending time on anything that doesn't want to go out. I used 360 like a tablet, so I sat in that complex right in daily would have to increase the discoverability of our show and add listeners. Those are the only two things that I'm doing, and if any action that I'm taking or any time I'm spending doesn't contribute to that, I'm not doing it. So that's my resolution. I'm done wasting my time on social media that nobody reads good reads, that nobody cares about efforts that are pointless but you feel like, oh, I have to do them. I have to do them. Actually, you don't have to do them, so I'm not gonna do that.

Lisa Schmid: 16:30

I've got a couple of resolutions too, I mean just things I want to achieve next year, and my chapter book series is going on sub in. I'm very excited for this one, it's so cute. I am, too, just wrapping up the second one and I've just sometimes I just sit there and I'm laughing. I'm like, oh my God, this is. But again I'm entertained by myself. So that's yeah, my son will hear me laughing and he'll just be like, oh my God, are you laughing and hearing? Right, there's mom.

Beth McMullen: 16:59

I'm like, yeah, Getting alone in her writing room laughing like a crazy person.

Lisa Schmid: 17:03

But then I also need to finish my new time travel MG, which is making my head hurt I think everyone already knows. But also like stepping away more from social media. I mean, I have to do it for you know, I'm doing it for writers with wrinkles and I have to do it, obviously, for my stuff, but I'm moving away from Twitter completely is like my big goal, because that's yeah, it's just, it's a wasteland.

Beth McMullen: 17:28

I canceled my account and I did not see any impact. None like it had zero impact, other than I pulled back a little bit of the time that I used to spend on it. So I think I think for people like us it doesn't it doesn't have any impact. You could just let it go.

Lisa Schmid: 17:45

Well, and it's interesting Like I used to see there was so many teachers on there, like that was my big that's. I loved like talking to other you know, seeing the teachers and the librarians, and I don't see them anymore, like I don't see any engagement and I'm just, and there's just so many people have left. It's really it's a ghost town and it just it's not like it used to be and so there's no point of being on there. I'm gonna leave my account there, but I'm just it's gonna basically become inactive.

Beth McMullen: 18:14

I this is a good time to point out that that writers with wrinkles is now on threads. You can find us over there. Lisa figured that out today. Yay, we were all threaded out now.

Lisa Schmid: 18:24

Kathleen told me yesterday how to do it and I'm like what? Like I didn't know that you could. This is like a news flash for anybody else who may not know. Like in the beginning with threads, you could only get to it on your phone there, you couldn't get to it on your, your, your laptop or your computer. And then I found out yesterday you could and I was like what? Like now threads has opened up to me Cause I'm like I just don't. I do most of my stuff on on my computer. So I went on and I'm like, oh, this is magic. So we're on.

Beth McMullen: 18:55

They have added the ability to to add a single hashtag to your posts and it comes up as this little hyperlink. And so yesterday, drumroll, I discovered the cats of threads and I literally spent like two hours watching cat videos and cat pictures and sharing them all with my son, who's like please stop bombarding me with the cat pictures. I'm like, oh, come on, they're so cute cats on the top of Christmas trees. It was adorable Anyway, so that made me very happy.

Lisa Schmid: 19:29

Oh my God, I didn't know. They added the hashtag thing. I'll have to. They did.

Beth McMullen: 19:33

They did. So you can. You can find us over there and we will be. We will be very excited to you know thread with you. Oh boy, that was bad, that was really bad. Okay, that's all for today's episode. We are rerunning two of our favorite episodes, one of which we already mentioned. That will be Leslie Zampetty, on Christmas day, and then on New Years we have Eric Smith, who is another agent and author, and his episode was chock full of really useful information. So we're hoping that if you haven't listened to those, you will give them a go. You will not be disappointed. We've got some great guests lined up for you in season three, which kicks off with marketing expert Kathleen Schmidt on January 8th. As we already mentioned, we are super excited for 2024.

Beth McMullen: 20:19

Lisa has a book coming out Yay. It's called Heart and Souls. Go, order it, pre-order it. Wherever you buy your books, you will not be disappointed. It's really fun and funny, like all of Lisa's work is. And that's it. So until 2024, from us here at Riders with Wrinkles to all of you, we wish you warm, healthy and joyous holidays, however you celebrate, and we will see you back here in January. Bye Lisa, bye guys, bye guys.