Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 10

Another publisher collective: United Publishing Group

United Publishing Group brings together Forefront Books, Histria Books, and Unicorn Publishing Group in the UK.

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Links of Interest: July 23, 2025

The latest in trends, culture & politics, libraries, and AI.

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Username or E-mail Password * function mepr_base64_decode(encodedData) { var decodeUTF8string = function(str) { // Going backwards: from bytestream, to percent-encoding, to original string. return decodeURIComponent(str.split('').map(function(c) { return '%' + ('00' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-2) }).join('')) } if (typeof window !== 'undefined') { if (typeof window.atob !== 'undefined') { return decodeUTF8string(window.atob(encodedData)) } } else { return new Buffer(encodedData, 'base64').toString('utf-8') } var b64 = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=' var o1 var o2 var o3 var h1 var h2 var h3 var h4 var bits var i = 0 var ac = 0 var dec = '' var tmpArr = [] if (!encodedData) { return encodedData } encodedData += '' do { // unpack four hexets into three octets using index points in b64 h1 = b64.indexOf(encodedData.charAt(i++)) h2 = b64.indexOf(encodedData.charAt(i++)) h3 = b64.indexOf(encodedData.charAt(i++)) h4 = b64.indexOf(encodedData.charAt(i++)) bits = h1 << 18 | h2 << 12 | h3 << 6 | h4 o1 = bits >> 16 & 0xff o2 = bits >> 8 & 0xff o3 = bits & 0xff if (h3 === 64) { tmpArr[ac++] = String.fromCharCode(o1) } else if (h4 === 64) { tmpArr[ac++] = String.fromCharCode(o1, o2) } else { tmpArr[ac++] = String.fromCharCode(o1, o2, o3) } } while (i < encodedData.length) dec = tmpArr.join('') return decodeUTF8string(dec.replace(/\0+$/, '')) } jQuery(document).ready(function() { document.getElementById("meprmath_captcha-6881deabd7d6f").innerHTML=mepr_base64_decode("NyArIDIgZXF1YWxzPw=="); }); Remember Me     Forgot Password

The Secret to a Writing Career May Boil Down to Sheer Grit

Today’s post is by author and book coach Amy L. Bernstein.

Generally speaking, writers have an unlimited appetite for discussing writing. The craft itself, of course, but also contracts, marketing and publicity, agent-shopping, advances and royalties, finding trusted beta readers, and so forth. Put half a dozen writers together in a room and hours later, they’re still going at it, with plenty left to say as long as the drinks and snacks hold out.

But one topic we don’t discuss nearly enough in my view is the role that grit plays in predicting and shaping who will succeed as a career author (that is, become happily and serially published) and who will walk away from it all, possibly heartbroken and defeated, or at least having decided there are better and certainly more lucrative ways to suffer.

Our species would never have gotten this far without a large dose of raw grit, which we can thank for enabling us to solve problems (hunting woolly mammoths, heating frigid caves) and to persevere in the face of daunting odds (draught, floods, war, famine).

About a dozen years ago, the concept of grit was revived for the modern age by psychologist Angela Duckworth (author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance), who described it as “a facet of conscientiousness defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals.”

The short-hand term for grit might be stick-to-it-ive-ness. It’s a quality every writer needs to meet short-term goals, such as finishing or revising a book chapter, as well as long-term goals, which include weathering dry creative spells and bouts of rejection.

Grit is not a function of intelligence

Since Duckworth burst onto the scene with fresh insights into what grit is, who has it, and how to get it, many researchers have delved into the topic and produced new insights. One study from 2022, for instance, offered the encouraging news that “high grit people do not necessarily have a greater cognitive capacity. Rather, they use it in a different way.”

Simply put, a writer’s capacity for grit (or anyone’s) isn’t tied to how smart they are, but rather, how they manage and regulate emotions and responses to external stimuli.

Think about this: Really smart people don’t necessarily succeed because they’re smart but because they pay close attention to what’s going on around them and tend toward mindfulness over impulsivity. Researchers refer to this as a “cautious profile of control.”

Not every writer fits this profile, of course. Think of Hunter S. Thompson and his long cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled benders, to name just one scribe who behaved impulsively and perhaps not entirely mindfully.

But let’s not miss the larger point here, which is that grittiness is a deeply useful social construct that operates like the low hum of your refrigerator motor; it’s always there in the background, doing its job, keeping the machine running at a steady rate. Because these days, any writer pursuing a career based on creativity must also grapple with the business end of the business, so to speak. It’s hard to do that without leaning into—and making a point of developing—the kind of gritty perseverance that sees you through the tough times and uncertainties every writer faces.

Another fairly recent finding about grit that writers should welcome is the idea that “perseverance of effort predicts … success more reliably than consistency of interests.” The subject here revolved around academia, but surely we can extrapolate to the writing community at large. My takeaway is that it’s fine to flit from genre to genre, fiction to nonfiction and back again, books to essays, as long as you remain consistent in your commitment to your writing practice and all that goes with, i.e., the ups and downs.

Writers planning for a serious career need to take grit seriously as a part of their survival toolkit. Research suggests several factors to consider as you build your grit muscles. (I want to acknowledge that writers who identify as neuro-atypical, neuro-divergent, diagnosed with ADHD and more, may need to adapt some of these tactics, and draw upon others, to align with the way their own brains operate. Thus, what follows is a generalization.) These factors include:

Practicing a growth mindset

Writers often fixate on outcomes well outside their control, ranging from landing an agent to winning a literary prize or writing a bestseller. Setting such pinpoint goals often leads to disappointment, burnout, and a sense of failure. The flip side is to adapt a growth mindset that prizes effort for its own sake, learning, embracing challenges, and seeing failure as an opportunity to grow. Think of your writing career as a living, breathing entity that requires care and encouragement, not repeated head-bashings. Grit involves a flexible attitude, not a rigid one.

Maintaining self-control

Writing can certainly feel like an emotional roller-coaster, between the creative act itself, the submission process, and everything that leads up to a publishing deal—followed by tussles with an editor who you believe is out to maul your copy. But you’re not well-served by allowing strong emotions to get the better of you at any stage of the business. Tears one day followed by champagne the next is no way to sustain a career. Make the pursuit of an even keel your goal. It’s an essential component of grit. And remember that a writing career spans years and your sense of success, failure, and self-worth cannot be measured in weeks or months. When you turn 90, then you can assess.

Remaining focused

Be grateful to your brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions including planning, decision-making, working memory, and impulse control. This is, in part, the biological basis for grit. In the face of challenges, these capacities can help you remain focused on crucial tasks as you work to avoid spinning out emotionally and/or losing the ability to concentrate. If you want help getting in touch with the power of your prefrontal cortex, check out Breathe. Write. Breathe. by Lisa Tener; Do You Feel Like Writing? by Frankie Rollins; and Creative Resilience by Erica Ginsberg.

Responding to stress

As professions go, writing may not be as stressful as, say, open-heart surgery, but it’s up there. But stress isn’t all bad. Some people with a severe peanut allergy can acquire a healthy tolerance for the stuff by frequent, short-term exposure to increasing amounts. Being gritty means tolerating stress, sometimes lots of it. Avoiding stress is rarely the answer to managing it. Rather, think of your ability and willingness to handle stress as part of your stress inoculation strategy, which begins by understanding your stress triggers and responses and reframing stress as a solvable challenge. Learning to handle stress with healthy coping mechanisms sure beats freaking out every time something doesn’t break your way.

A personal grit story

Looking back over the last decade of my own writing journey, I see now that I have grit to thank for anything I’ve accomplished as a writer. Grit—not talent, not luck, not connections—has sustained me through a crushing load of rejections, a publishing deal gone bad, years of intense self-doubt.

Grit is the pillar that remained upright when the foundations crumbled around me. And I clung to it. I chose to persevere, no matter what.

I recently signed a contract for my third traditionally published novel after more than two years of fruitless pitching. I was on the cusp of giving up. But the gritty voice inside me wouldn’t let me—and I’m so glad I listened.

As I write this, another rejection has dropped into my inbox. But that’s okay. Because the definition of grit is to put one foot in front of another every single day, to keep creating, even as obstacles arise and foundations crumble.

The artist’s life is bumpy and unpredictable. By tapping into your inner grittiness, you’ll give yourself and your career a fighting chance to blossom for years to come.

Using AI to Explore Scientific Realism and Build Story Bibles for Fiction Writing

Photo by Romain Kamin

Today’s post is by author Tuesday Kuykendall.

I’m a retired materials scientist and an avid physics geek. I love robots, computers, and artificial intelligence. I was reared on Star Trek (Spock and Data are my favorites), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and the early excitement of the US space program. Science and science fiction are welded to my view of the world.

Most of my stories include AI characters. Not so much as subject matter, but because I can’t imagine a future without them. My themes cover topics about what defines intelligence, non-human sentience, and what consciousness means. (That sounds more serious than it is—my fiction is meant to be fun!)

I would never use AI to write for me. I embrace the hard part of writing. A search in my thesaurus or dictionary for just the right word or phrase, writing and rewriting a scene until it feels right: I love that. The thrill of creating something new would be ruined for me if I turned any of it over to a software program.

I’m what’s called a pantser, or I write by the seat of my pants. I have found that outlines, story maps, cards, sticky notes, etc, end up interrupting my writing more than aiding it. Often, once I’ve completed an outline, I will lose interest in the story. But I can go down long rabbit holes and spend way too much time on things like making pretty charts, creating word maps, or doing research.

I usually have a vague idea of where I want to go, but I like to let the story tell itself, especially in the first draft. It’s after that, when I do the editing, rearranging, researching, fleshing out scenes, that I focus on the mechanics of the thing. And that’s where I find AI of value. (But see caveat at the end of this article.)

Scientific realism

I make up a lot of science-y sounding stuff. But I want it to be grounded in real science, real physics. AI evaluates my ideas and lets me know if it’s feasible or ridiculous. If it’s way off, AI will make suggestions for making my ideas more realistic. I also use it to summarize complex scientific papers (like quantum computing) for me in layman’s terms.

In the example below, I wanted to know if the concepts and devices I created for a book about a small group of survivors living on the moon made sense. One of the primary protagonists is a quantum computer AI (CIMON, a real computer on ISS) and the MAVs are part of the space vehicle systems I imagined. Here is an example of ChatGPT’s answer when I fed in the paragraphs I’d written and asked it to evaluate feasibility.

ConceptAccuracyNotesQuantum AI Mostly FictionalCIMON exists, but quantum AI is not yet a reality.Life Support & Oxygen Management AccurateGood understanding of space station logistics.MAVs as Earth-Moon Shuttles Plausible with advanced propulsionA nuclear or hybrid system would make sense.MAVs with Atmospheric Capabilities Uncommon but possibleMost space-to-surface vehicles aren’t both atmospheric and deep space-capable.Digital Library & File Sharing AccurateAstronauts do bring personal media to space.Psychological Effects Highly AccurateRealistic astronaut behavior in crisis.

In another book, my protagonist is a homeless woman named Jane who has amnesia. She and her companion are surprised when she demonstrates medical skills. I wanted to put her in a situation where she automatically knew what to do, but I don’t have any medical knowledge to make that sound realistic. I asked Claude to suggest some scenarios and provide the proper medical terms. This is its (abridged) response:

A diabetic emergency would work perfectly; common, dramatic, but manageable with basic medical knowledge.

Scenario: Someone in the town collapses, sweating, confused, shaky hands. Could be low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or high blood sugar (diabetic ketoacidosis)…[that Jane solves]…

Suggested terms and symptoms and their meanings:

Sweating, confused, shaky handsLow blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or high blood sugar (diabetic ketoacidosis)Blood glucose (not “blood sugar”)Glucose gel, orange juice, anything with simple carbsCheck pulse, “tachycardic” (fast heart rate)Fingernails, skin – “Poor Perfusion”Elevate legs

I will do some fact checking to make sure the AI didn’t make up something stupid. But this information helps make the scene authentic.

Story bible and technical documents

I’ve used Claude to help create my story bibles, which include documents that lay out basic concepts, like where the story takes place, when it happens, what are the technologies and what are the rules. Consistent rules in world building are critical in science fiction and fantasy.

All the information I share comes from me. I create my own character profiles, specifics about the world I’m building, technology, and relevant draft passages, then feed that data into the AI.

Here’s an excerpt from a document describing a quantum computer in the future. Remember, these are my inputs and ideas. AI organizes it and provides a reality check. It made a few suggestions and clarifications for how a quantum AI might work if it were real. How, or if, I use that information in my book will be up to me.

Fundamental principles

Node Definition: Quantum resonance cavities are pockets of spacetime that maintain quantum coherence long after the extinction of quantum computers.Detection Method: Exotic, short-lived particles behaving as entangled pairs within quantum foam background noise, created by these resonance cavities.Energy Correlation: Older nodes produce weaker quantum signals requiring more computational energy to access and amplify, similar to tuning distant radio stations.

Once it’s finished, I put the bible alongside my chapters in Scrivener so that I can refer to it while I’m writing. It keeps the world I built coherent, and I don’t have to keep going back and forth through chapters to double check myself when I forget something.

I do not recommend writers do this work with free AI tools.

If I were writing nonfiction science content (something I had to do for years), I would be extremely careful using free tools, if at all. The risk of misinformation or made-up facts is too high.

The quality of AI results is dependent on the quality of the prompts it’s given and the data it was trained on. I often find that I have to go back and forth with it several times before it gives me helpful feedback. If you don’t ask the questions correctly, you might get a lot of information you don’t want, need, or understand. It is important to remember that whichever model you use, it’s designed to provide an answer that you will like. However, specialized AI tools in medicine and other technical fields are honed for accuracy but rarely made available to the public.

There is an aspect of AI prompting that I don’t think gets stressed enough in many of the discussions I’ve read on the topic. When you’re in a chat, the chat itself provides context and your questions are all informing the model’s answers. If you see weird responses, review your prompts to see where it might have gone wrong, then close the chat and start a new one. If you’re in ChatGPT and there is a chat session that’s wonky, I would recommend deleting it so the model doesn’t continue to draw from it.

AI is a beneficial tool, but it is only as good, and as ethical, as the people who are using it. The companies who have created these tools for public use continue to refine them. They claim to be trying to make them harder to use in nefarious ways. I believe writers and other artists have an opportunity to help shape the future of AI. We can provide feedback, input, and hold the companies accountable for how AI develops. In order to do that, we need to understand it and in order to understand it, we need to use it. I hope this helps provide some insight into ways a writer can use new AI tools to support their process.

New imprint at Penguin: Berkeley XO

The adult-YA crossover imprint will publish fiction only, combining talent from Penguin’s Berkley and Penguin Young Readers imprints.

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New imprint: Bite Books

HarperCollins has partnered with Fox Entertainment on a food imprint, Bite Books, an extension of Fox’s brand Bite.

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New imprint: Medill Books

Agate Publishing has partnered with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to publish reported, short-length nonfiction books.

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Google launches Offerwall

The feature allows websites to give readers a variety of ways to access content—such as watching ads, making a micropayment, and more.

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Links of Interest: July 16, 2025

The latest in traditional publishing, trends, the creator economy, culture & politics, and AI.

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What Does It Mean to Write and Publish a Viral Article?

Photo by Nadine Marfurt on Unsplash

Today’s post is by novelist and freelance writer Rebecca Morrison. Join us on Thursday, July 31, for the free class What Happens When Your Piece Goes Viral?

What does it mean to have a piece go viral?

To tell you the truth, I don’t know. There are different definitions out there, but not everyone agrees on what it means for a piece to go viral.

Here’s the story behind my three essays, and why I give them that label.

My first piece was what I’d call traditionally viral. I’d never written for a national publication and didn’t know what to expect. The day it came out on HuffPost, it shot to the number one trending story on Apple News. It went to number one again when they republished it the next year. was about my immigrant experience and what it means to have someone question your belonging. The writing was average at best. But it struck a chord. I’m convinced what made it go so wide was the last few defiant sentences about how we’re all American equally, whether our families have been here for hundreds of years or we’ve become American in another way. That piece has been viewed over 3 million times. It was like everyone that felt like an outsider because of their ethnicity sent it to anyone they’d ever met.

The next ones were different in terms of their viral-ness.

The second essay was about my complicated, sometimes dark mother-daughter relationship. It was published on Today.com. I shared the story of the pressure my mother put on me to be thin when I was young. And how it took years for us to come to a place of healing even if it wasn’t perfect or finished. The piece stayed at the top of their homepage the entire day, right next to Met Gala coverage and celebrity gossip, which is extremely unusual for a no-name writer’s personal essay. Several months later, the editor told me it had been one of their most-read essays for months. They republished it multiple times on their Facebook page. On one of the reposts, it received thousands of comments from mothers and daughters, sharing their own heartbreaking stories and saying the essay made them feel seen.

The third came out last September in The Washington Post. It was about Ozempic and the message we send women about their bodies. I shared my complicated feelings about being judged for my body and how our worth, especially as women, is so often tied to appearance. I ended it with a statement of resistance to the idea that we need to be thin to be seen as beautiful or worthy. That piece became the number one most-read story in the Well+Being section for several days, which is rare. It got more than 1,800 comments before they closed the comment section after three days.

All of this is to say that there’s no one way for a piece to go viral.

Sometimes it’s traditional, other times a publication shares your piece on their socials and it touches a chord there. You’ll know when it hits because people find you. They flood your inbox. They leave hundreds, sometimes thousands, of comments on social media posts.

I know my writing wasn’t what made those pieces go viral. Here are the things I think helped them reach a wide audience:

I told my story in a way that was easily understood and felt.The topic tapped into something that a large audience could connect to like immigrant identity, mother-daughter relationships, and society’s obsession with women’s bodies.I was vulnerable and honest in a way that is tough and scary, but that makes the piece feel like a close friend is confiding in you.

So what happens when thousands or millions of people read your work? There will be people that love it, hate it, and everything in between. I’ve been told to “go back to my own country” numerous times, even though I’ve lived here most of my life. When I talked about not taking Ozempic and having a bigger body, the hate and criticism I got were expected but still really stung. But with every piece, the vast majority of comments and emails I got were from people reaching out to say that they felt seen, less alone, connected.

Writing those deeply personal pieces have been some of the proudest moments of my writing life. And I’d do it again in a second. When you show people something real, whether they agree with you or despise you, it stirs something.

Note from Jane: If you’re curious about the before, during and after of viral essays, join me in discussion with Rebecca Morrison and Andrea Tate in a free class on Thursday, July 31, What Happens When Your Piece Goes Viral?