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 …

Change Fatigue: Flip Teams From Burnout to Buy-In Read More »

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 …

Writing Feedback: Dos and Don’ts Read More »

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 …

No head, all hands Read More »

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 …

Hello, Time to Write Members! Read More »

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

Once I told a French person that we keep our Camembert in the fridge. That, ahem, actually, you can’t buy unrefrigerated cheese in any grocery store in the U.S. (None I know of, anyway.) She said: “A cheese is alive. The refrigerator is a murder of the taste of a cheese.”* … A few years later, I was in a writing class. A fellow student (not the French person) was telling the class about the story she’d written, that she was about to read aloud. Her eyes flashed and she grinned and chatted and held our attention. That’s why it was so striking when, as soon as she began to read her piece, she turned into a refrigerated cheese. She read beautifully loud and clear. But the writing itself did not reflect the aliveness of her speaking pattern nor her idiom. The charming way …

On writing: Allowing the magic to unfold naturally Read More »

I was dawdling in my inbox when I came across this line in Esther Perel’s newsletter: “We have to remember,” my peer told me, “that when people aren’t listening, it’s because they don’t feel heard.” … Great thought, right? It applies to our writing efforts in lots of ways, but here’s one way you might not think of: Do you listen to you? Specifically, some of you, like me, have many different tiny people running around on the inside of your brain. Some are brave and kind, many more are anxious and scowling. In an attempt to calm them, you might be telling these freaked-out minis things like, “Don’t worry! I really want to write my book draft. I have the motivation! This is the year we get it done!” You may even attempt to order them around: “When you pipe up it …

Writer, are you taking time to listen to yourself? Read More »

“Alex wheeled the Range Rover into the parking lot of MNY Bank. He grabbed his portfolio from the backseat and sprinted to the doors. A quick check of his watch made it official: 9:06 a.m. He was late—again. ***That’s the first paragraph of Built to Sell, a business book that could have been dry as dust. It’s also an example of beginning in medias res. In medias res just means starting in the middle of the story. “Plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain of events,” as Britannica says. Maybe the book begins in the heat of an argument during a war that has already started (like the Iliad). Or it begins with the protagonist already in financial trouble, like the paragraph above. *** The opposite of in medias res is ab ovo—”from the egg”—starting the story at the earliest chronological point. …

The right place to start your book Read More »

​“Do it now,” says Ira. ​ Don’t wait until you have the right support or even the right idea. “Just start making it now.” Shoot the arrows now, Olav Hauge might say.* But one of the reasons I find a lot of would-be authors don’t just do it now is that it’s really, really hard. What exactly is it that’s so hard? Is it the writing itself? Finding the time? Maybe. Here’s what’s hard for me: if I start, I have to make choices. Choice after choice after choice. As long as I don’t write my book, my potential is limitless. The thing I’m creating is nothing, so that means it could be anything! From the moment I make my first choice, I whittle down that endless potential. And it’s not just that the potential narrows from limitless to limited. (That should actually feel good, right? It’s taking shape.) …

Writing motivation from Ira Glass Read More »

Years of Experience with Bows and Arrows by Olav H. Hauge, translated by Robert Hedin and Robert Bly What you are supposed to hit is the bull’s eye, that black spot, that precise spot, and the arrow is supposed to stand there quivering! But that’s not where the arrow goes. You get closer to it, close and closer; no, not close enough. Then you have to go out and pick up all the arrows, walk back, try it again. That black spot is highly annoying until you finally grasp that where your arrow stands quivering is also the center of something. ​ from The Dream We Carry, Copper Canyon Press, 2018. Shared with me by Holly Wren Spaulding. ​​ **** One day, I was home with my son Morgan and who has spent the day either – refusing to play …

The imprecise art of writing and parenting Read More »

It’s easy for me to tell you, “If you get unsolicited feedback on your writing don’t listen to it.” But do you want to know what I do when I get feedback? If you selected “Ignore myself!” … yeah. I got a lot of feedback on Be About Something, the book I wrote last year. All of the feedback that was not full of rave reviews made me question everything. Every. Single. Time. I was a thin-skinned MFer. Until I realized something. Some of the feedback that was making me feel insecure was from people who told me they wished I had included this or that element in the book. Those people were not beingnegative. They were asking for something that Be About Something doesn’t provide. That’s not the same thing. ​ *** ​Suddenly, an analogy popped into my head: If I walk into a Volvo dealership …

Your book can’t be for everyone: the importance of defining a niche Read More »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about mindset. When it comes to struggling with writing, it’s true: mindset is a big factor. Working on my own mindset helped me complete two books over the past 18 months. But also. After working over the past few years with many clients who are first-time authors, I’ve realized that mindset is not the problem. It’s that they don’t know the next right step to take after they come up with their book. So, they dive into writing. And there they encounter gremlins. Not the cute Ewok-type ones. The slimy, green, haunt-your-nightmares ones. Like… My idea isn’t original enough, or that it’s not something enough to deserve to become a book. I’m not experienced/expert/successful/wealthy/wise enough to write this story. My first, unedited attempts are not as good as Becoming/Untamed/Educated/Small Doses, (even when they know darn well that each of …

How will I know when I’m ready to write my book? Read More »

When I first started helping people write their books, I focused on their ideas. “Your ideas are brilliant! Let’s just get them down,” I’d say. It’s fun to help people articulate their ideas clearly. Not only fun, of course, but absolutely necessary to writing a book. Non-negotiable. And… Books filled with ideas but no story are unreadable. *** If you’re writing a book, you need a story. The first step in outlining your narrative structure (story) is to accept this fact: A story is not a collection of things that happened, told one after the other. It’s not!? It’s not. A story requires causality. Meaning: the thing that happens causes the next thing to happen in the story. Of course it’s not just books that tell stories: movies do it, too. Something like: Woman goes to bed. A freak lightning storm rages outside. The …

What makes a page-turner? Read More »

I just started using Retinol last week. It’s an anti-wrinkle skin cream. Yes, I know, they are all “anti-wrinkle” skin creams. But Retinol actually works moderately well. Magic in a tube. And on that tube itself is written the following recommendation: “If you have never used Retinol products, begin use two evenings a week, then gradually increase frequency to every other night, and finally once an evening as tolerated.” I’ve written before about people who go too hard too soon, exhaust themselves, and quit. Retinol is apparently aware of this phenomenon, too. Retinol knows I want results. AND Retinol knows that if I start by applying Retinol to my skin every night, my skin will sting and peel and I’ll quit using it. (It’d be more precise to say that whoever makes Retinol knows these things, but for the sake of argument let’s just attribute this intelligence …

The Retinol method: too much, too soon Read More »