Maggie Frank-Hsu

M client, Jenny Magic, who just published her first book, Change Fatigue: Flip Teams From Burnout to Buy-In, with her co-author Melissa Breker. I was lucky enough to edit the book, a fascinating take on small-scale change management, available here. Feels so good to hold it in my hands! A little backstory: Jenny came to me in late December 2022 with an outline and somewhere around 7,000 words written. Less than five months later, she and Melissa published a full-length book! That is lightning fast in the world of books, even self-published books. I want to share some tips for how she and Melissa did it and what I learned from them. Here’s a short interview I did with Jenny (captions included). Jenny also told me that she’d had the idea for the book for years, which was part of the reason

As you work on your piece of writing, you probably crave feedback. Feedback can be very helpful! But, this post isn’t about that. :p This post is about whom NOT to ask. Yes, there are so many ways to give terrible writing feedback that is unhelpful or worse, discouraging. Even though I’ve read thousands of terrible edits and review comments, I can fit almost all “bad feedback” into three buckets. Just three! These are the three types of people not to ask for feedback. ​They are: 1.The Cheerleader This reviewer loves everything you do. They just want you to keep going, keep writing, keep shining! You got this! It’s invaluable to have support from the Cheerleader. Their hype is irreplaceable! But! The Cheerleader can’t offer specifics. “You’re awesome!” It’s a fact, but it’s not specific. 2. The Underminer This reader wants you to fail. Seems

Sometimes I read somewhere about the importance of play in our lives, and I think a bit sheepishly that even when I was a kid, I didn’t really… play that much. I was asthmatic and unathletic, and I was indifferent to the outdoors. (Don’t worry, I learned to love being outside later.) ​Still, when I hear creative advice about how we as grown-ups should play, an image appears in my mind of my neighbor’s front lawn, where we kids were playing after school. A bunch of the girls spontaneously lined up to do cartwheels, and when it was my turn, well… But over time I’ve realized there are other ways to play, ways that even a serious little first-grader like me could get down with. Collage is one of those ways. Collage is a “no head, all hands” activity. (Gardening

Thanks for signing up for Time to Write, a one-hour writing session on Zoom that happens every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. PT, beginning January 11! Time to Write is and will always remain free as long as you are a member of my email list. If you’re not a member, join here. Here’s a little about who I am, so that you know more about how (and why) I am facilitating Time to Write. I want you to get the most out of the experience! I’m a writer and editor, who has worked with hundreds of writers over the years. I’m also in the middle of writing my second book. I self-published my first book, Be About Something in 2020, which I wrote to help people who wanted to write but needed help figuring out what they wanted to say and how

What losing on Jeopardy! taught me about my work and myself.