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Thanksgiving Gratitude

Thanksgiving Gratitude

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 Hi all! In honor of Thanksgiving, we decided to share what we’re doing to get MORE of what we’re grateful for in our writing lives—as in, try not just to give a nod to gratitude but actually increase the things we do to feel it. Enjoy! Are you staring down a holiday shopping list with a haunted look in your eyes? My great big guide to holiday under-the-radar book-giving perfection can help. Maybe you think not everyone in your life wants a book, but honestly, they are just wrong. I’ve got a book on my list for the therapy-speak-loving teen who’s glued to TikTok, a book for your mom whose book club just forced her to read Emily Henry and just wants a protagonist with a little seasoning. One for your dad, who thinks TV hasn’t been the same since The X-Files. And a few for your book-loving bestie, who’s read everything already, and all you have to do to get the list to drop right into your phone for your shopping pleasure is join my newsletter, Hashtag AmReading, at kjda.substack.com—link in the show notes and pretty much anywhere where you can find me, which is easy.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMultiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it’s recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.KJ Dell’AntoniaHey kids, it’s KJ, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters.Jess LaheyI’m Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The New York Times and The Washington Post and The Atlantic.Sarina BowenAnd I’m Sarina Bowen. My newest novel is called Thrown for a Loop, and you can find it at bookstores everywhere.Jennie NashAnd I’m Jennie Nash. I’m the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. And I’m the author of the Blueprint books that help you get your book out of your head and onto your page. And today, the four of us have gathered to talk about gratitude. It’s the week of Thanksgiving, and we’ve been thinking about the things that we’re grateful for in our writing life, and how we want to celebrate that and amplify that. So we thought we’d share that all with you today. KJ, do you want to start by talking about what you’re grateful for?KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, I actually managed to give this some thoughts. Since we did, we did talk about it. And I should say we kind of got the idea from Laura Vanderkam’s newsletter, which is really great, and you should subscribe. She was just talking about how, you know, it’s one thing to be grateful for things like, “Whoo, I’m grateful that I live in such a beautiful place,” but it’s another thing to say, “And because I’m grateful that I live in such a beautiful place, this week I will make a point of going for a walk, you know, tonight with my dog, in a place that I love,” or something along that. Her point was: come up with something and then actually do something to amplify that for yourself. So you’re not just sitting around, you know, writing a gratitude journal. You’re actually trying to do something about it. So having announced that I am totally prepared for this—I’m not really, but I kind of am. Okay. So one of the things that I am grateful for this year, a little weirdly, is AI, and it is not for the reasons anyone might think. I’m primarily grateful—I’m grateful that the spurt of AI in everything that I read, from Goodreads book reviews to things in my inbox to, I’m sorry, actual articles in actual newspapers… it’s become so recognizable. The stuff that is written, the pattern, the three examples, the particular words that are invariably used. Oh, somebody threw one out the other night—oh, in the real estate world, if it says something is “nestled between two things,” that’s AI. Anyway, that made me realize that the last thing I want is something else to do any of this for me. I just don’t. I just, you know, sometimes you sit around going, “Oh, somebody just write this book for me—” you know what? No. No. Because I don’t want my book to be nestled between a rock and a hard place or whatever. So, so no. So what I’m doing to sort of bring that home for myself is I’m actually trying to be more present, in particular within the AmWriting—the AmWriting universe. So I’ve been doing something that I’m calling Hashtag AmWriting ‘Almost’ Every Day. It’s really nowhere close to every day. Don’t worry about getting your inbox full. But I am—you know, that’s actually me. If I have time and something to say, or something to whine, or some write-alongs to share, or an idea, then I’m going to put that out there for y’all. And hopefully you’re going to...
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