Hi, Cassie. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here today.
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And I just love talking to you, Stacey. So this is an honor. Thank you.
Same. Same. So will you please share a bit more about your journey to becoming a writer and a book coach with our listeners?
Sure. So I came to writing a little later in life. I actually had a learning disability when I was younger. I don't know if you knew that, but reading was not an easy thing for me in elementary and middle school. So I really struggled and had to develop that skill set. After college, I began reading for fun and my husband bought me my first Kindle and I was hooked because I found different genres that weren't literary, things I had to read, right, to move forward in the education system.
And I flew through them and I started thinking, what if, could I change this? Could I change that? A different ending perhaps? So that led me to creative writing classes in my thirties. I was like, I'm going to develop and just see. I've always been. Very artistic. I've always been drawn to story. So that just felt like a natural thing for me.
So several years after I published my first novel in 2016, then onward to finish that series and a mix, I was continuing to learn and listen. And I found. Jeannie Nash on a podcast. And she was talking about the author accelerator. So I went down the rabbit hole. I think like many do. And I checked out her book, her website, all the things, because it spoke to me.
I was naturally already coaching and critiquing with fellow authors that I had met.. I am naturally a coach, a teacher, a mentor. So it's just part of my DNA. And I was like, yep, I'm folding in, I'm making the investment and it will further my career from a fiction standpoint that I was looking to do anyway, as well as building out the things I enjoy on the other side of the fence, if you will, and coaching and motivating writers. So that's how my journey started.
So your first book that you published came out in 2016. Is that right? Yes. All right. And was that the beginning of the unwanted series? It was that's magic. That's the first book. Yeah.
And did you were, and did you say you worked with a coach? Yes, I did. I worked with a writing coach.
Yes, I did. What was that experience like? It was great. So the reason I did that, this is kind of an interesting story, and I think a lot of people. will kind of have some empathy for this is that my very first book I wrote took me a very long time to do is about 90, 000 words. And it was, it was kind of a mash posh of what I would call young adult fantasy, but It will never see the light of day.
It was practice to get me experienced to know what that is. And my husband was like, okay, you finished this book. You wrote the end. You've done some editing. You've done these classes now. What? And I was like, he's like, are you going to publish it? Are you going to query it? And I was like, yeah. That's not the book that's going.
I have a new idea. I think what I'm going to do is put myself knowing my personality, put myself on a time schedule with this other idea. I'm going to hire this writing coach and I'm going to have some accountability. Here's the thing. My personality is one that if I hire a trainer at the gym, by God, I'm showing up and I'm working out.
But if I just get a membership to the gym. I will dabble when I come and go. So I knew putting money where my mouth was with a writing coach, by God, I was showing up and I was getting it done and we did. I mean, I just pushed and pushed. So it made a difference for me.
100%. And I think that that is such a, that's, that's such a big takeaway for, new writers out there that the first book, the first book teaches you so, so much, and we should honor that experience.
And even if it goes in the drawer it's no words, no words are wasted. It all leads to the next to the next and to the next to the next. And what's important is that you anchor into that creativity. You enjoy it and you continue. So thank you for sharing how you came , how you came into the writing world.
And so , the unwanted series that is a YA contemporary fantasy. So what draws you to write in the YA space and in the fantasy genre?
I talk about this a lot in writer fuel, which is my nonfiction book, how my why is I think why you do things are very important. I know it's a very Simon Sinek thing, and maybe it's in or out of style.
It's cool, by the way. But, yeah, I enjoy it. But early on, my why was wrapped up in my daughters who were teenagers. And pre young teens, and we were watching and consuming a lot of entertainment around why a fantasy with female leads. And my female leads were not always empowered to save themselves. And I was like, no, that's, that's not okay for me.
We're flipping the script on that. And I have some very strong headed kids, daughters. So they were with me on that. So that's what my initial why was wrapped up in them. Now they're 18 and 23 and they have moved far away from young adult fantasy, but I still sit in the space cause I enjoy it. And I, I think it's still very empowering to flip the script, have the female save herself and the prince and allowing some vulnerability during those times, cause I think there's this misconstrued idea of.
Females saving themselves and being empowered that they're rough and tough all the time. And that's not the case. So I love rooting for the underdog. I love rooting for flipping and twisting a narrative. And I'm in. So I realized early on that it wasn't serving me. I was missing the icing for the cake around my why I was like, okay, this isn't working for me.
On book two, which took me a long time to finish. Actually. I think book two, there's like this sophomore slump as they call it. And I definitely hit it full force. So it took me a little bit longer to figure out my full why and my full how. And I realized at that point was that all, although I was doing a lot of it for my daughters in that book, First book.
And it was fun to bring them in. They named characters. There's characters based off their personality, their friends, all the things, right? But as you move on and that thing has disappeared, you go, well, why am I still here? What, what does that do for me moving forward? So with that, I realized it came down to my mother and how I was raised and my purpose for quote, breaking the glass ceiling and continuing it in that vein.
And I realized that although as a mother and a wife, we tend to do a lot of things for everyone else. And I certainly challenged myself during that time of what am I doing for me and why am I writing for me? So it became a lot deeper after that. And I think you're why I know Simon will disagree with me, but I think you're why evolves over time and how you recognize it. I think it's important to really revisit it because I don't think it's a one and done definition.
People are not one-and-done definitions. People evolve, they can grow, they can change. And what we value, you know, will change at one point as we grow and experience life.
So absolutely the way we look at the world and our books are also going to change. I mean, maybe your core core values of, you know, do no harm, don't be an asshole. Maybe those values change how you are in relationship with, you know, your, work, Yourself. Those things change as you grow and evolves. It reminds me of, the quote that Maya Angelou says is, you know, you, you don't do better till you know better, which is paraphrasing, right? So as we grow and learn, we know better and we do better. So 2016 was magic. That was the first book, right? And then Rain was the second book. That's correct. And then the third was Sacred?
Yes, Sacred. And then
There's also a novella. Yeah.
Yeah. His blood vow. His blood vow.
So tell me, from 2016, when did you wrap up that series?
It might've been 2021. I'm not great with dates. What was interesting was though you would have thought I, I wrote magic in six months, which is crazy. Awesome. For new writers, do not hold yourself to that standard. I'm quite competitive. I have very high influencing strength.
And also new writers, remember that Cassie had a book in the trunk. That was not her first book and she was working with a writing coach. Yeah. And I actually love writing short stories too. So I've written a number of short stories up to this point.
So I, I actually took till 2018, the end of 2018 to finish rain.Rain took me a long time. I actually did one of those things where you write an outline, you start writing it, you go midway through and you scrap the whole damn thing.
And so I restarted and I actually hired a coach at that time. He, Also my editor and I utilized him for helping me tease out my outline and my beats. And this is what I kind of do on story mapping actually. So he was helping me develop things. And I said, Oh, I don't know that I can do this because there's going to be this kind of refugee piece because I had a split of a magical world versus our current contemporary world.
And things were going awry. People are being misplaced. And he said to me, and I'll never forget those. He said, you do realize that fantasy is just a mirror of the reality we're currently in. And I was like, Oh, well, if that makes, that makes it even harder, you know, like, Oh my gosh.
And he goes, no, no, no, just peel that back. Be in the fantasy world. And write it as it is, does, how does it impact your characters? That was also very moving for me because I, I tend to, I was sitting in the plot and I was, I was drowning in the plot. So there's a saying, I say, and this took me a long time to learn.
Plot is setting, story is character, period. So to me, the plot I was sitting in the setting of. refugees and this place and that place and how do I connect? No, it's how do those people live in that place, your characters, and how do they respond to what's going on in their subplot, maybe, or in their major plot in moving the action forward.
And once I got out of that, I flew, it was great, but it took me, I made it super heavy, which it can be if that's the dramatic choices you're making. But for my book as young adult, yeah, drama is only so much I tend to like fast moving books and YA that move forward and the reactions and the realizations.
Of, and we'll get into character because I love talking character, the lies that they believe, or they want others to believe. So I was just moving once I got out of my own head space of how important at that time, the world was around refugees.
So just for recap, this, this series I mean, it didn't take you too long to draft magic and then it was released in 2016 and wrap the series up with the novella 2020 21. So just for anybody out there listening, it's like books take time. And first take books take a lot of time, but I think it's evidence that as you grow and you learn and when you're working with a, with someone who can guide you and also help you shift perspective that you can get much more efficient and this is not your only gig, you also work.
A full time
job. I do in a completely different industry. But for me, I love having a creative outlet and it makes me happy. And some people like to garden and do other things. This is my thing.
So let's shift over. I know you enjoy focusing on ideation and story development, so can you give three maybe top tips to writers about what they need to consider when they're baking a new story?
Yeah, so there's a lot of emphasis on drafting, and I think the idea Needs more cultivation and around that my first advice is don't overthink it. I mean, if you're ready, and you've got some legs to stand on, you know, jump in the deep end is, is usually how we move let's write some things down let's see how it's going.
For me. I like building blocks, and I think it's important for people, whether they know whether they want to discovery right, which is part of ideation, or if you want to build a very strict outline and and guard rails, if you will. Goalposts on beats and outlines and all the things, because as a new writer, you can read a lot of how to do this outline, how to do that outline.
And sometimes you're not quite ready for that because you haven't really grown your seed of an idea yet. You haven't, you haven't put legs around it. Things I like to work on are themes and premise. And the other piece to that is kind of deconstruction of the things you read and how you want your story.
to mimic those beats and feelings even. So those are the things I like to wrap around when we start talking about ideas. I tend to be very question oriented when I'm talking with clients. So for example, somebody may say to me, I have this idea and I want to do a romance where a lady is always. You know, the bridesmaid, but never the bride.
And now she's 50 and her life is passing her by all the things, but I don't know where to start. Well, then I start asking questions of you as to who is this person and why is this important that she's not getting married? Is it the idea of marriage? Has she been engaged before? Could we start there? And what went wrong?
Is she currently dating and it's hell or, you know, what things do you want to look at? Is this dramatic? Is it a rom com, you know, what is this? So we start plotting and finding out what they enjoy. Are they enjoying Hallmark movies or is that too sappy for them? Do they enjoy this? Do they enjoy that?
So there's a lot of questions around that, but I think. To guiding yourself around the initial idea and taking time to figure out what that is, is extremely important. So that's, that's kind of a one, two, three piece for me is really cultivating that piece upfront.
You know, sometimes you don't know what your process is. You just kind of have to go through, the doing to find it, but focusing on what it is. What you're curious about what you enjoy and then kind of getting down to what do you want to say about this situation? And that factors into the premise, which gives you kind of your jumping off point and leads you into the central idea, the core idea.
And then, whether you lean towards discovery writing or you lean towards plotting or somewhere in the middle You'll figure that out. And honestly, it could be different for each book
Yes, exactly I can tell you the way I wrote magic was not how I wrote rain or sacred and The way I go about tackling nonfiction books is completely different than how I tackle fiction books absolutely,
And if you write in different genres, you may approach the ideation phase differently.
And, the drafting differently too. I come from a background in medicine and there's this famous saying, it says nothing's for sure. And it all depends. And it is true. Also in writing. That really rubs up against me who likes to have everything mapped out and, and known, but sometimes you just can't.
And I think the other thing that doesn't get talked about a lot is how much off manuscript writing it takes to be able to get it. To the, to the seat where you're starting to write in the manuscript. So that might be off page writing story developments, just, you know, character worksheets, writing backstory for them, you know, noodling, a lot of noodling.
Yeah, I have this. It's called a simple 3s structure at the beginning of a draft, because sometimes I think people get very nervous about spending a lot of time they picture some guy with a pipe sitting at a at a typewriter you know just plopping away at the keys that. And this, this simple three S structure that I talk about in writer fuel, it's around sight, sound, and sentiment.
And I learned that site for me was early on one of my professors. This is really interesting. I was writing something and I was just editing too much of it. And he said, turn that screen black. And right. And I was like, what? Okay. Monitors people, your monitors actually turn it off and type you turn off your monitor.
The word document is still going. You can blacken it out to where you can't see it. And it kind of freed me because I wasn't going backwards and I have this saying, don't go backwards to go forward, especially when drafting. And that freed me, but the thing around site is a lot of time. It can't inhibit us.
So one of the things I like to do is dictate and talk to myself. If you are a high communicator and you tend to communicate a lot of your ideas verbally versus introspectively, which typing is very good for you, talk to yourself and have that come out. transcribed for you. There's a lot of different apps.
We won't go into that, but certainly look into the best ones for you, but those will really help you move forward. I think sometimes people get stuck around the idea of writing that it must be something our fingers do and it doesn't. It doesn't have to be at all. Yeah. There
are some days when writing equals doing the dishes because you're thinking about your story.
There are some days when writing progress, you know, looks like deleting words. There are some days when writing progress looks like talking about your story to a friend. Right. So there are many, many definitions of progress. It does not always have to be increase in word count.
So from the perspective of, as a book coach who works in ideation and story development and enjoys that, what blocks do you see writers come up against?
What are some of the mental blocks? What are some of the, the other blocks?
Perfectionism is the devil of completion. So the first mental block is that your initial idea is the perfect idea. And a lot of the mental blocks is having flexibility around that idea. So usually, In collaboration when you're collaborating with someone, someone's pushing you to consider a specific idea.
That's where to me. The juice is really worth the squeeze around an idea. For example, I talked about, you know, refugees and immediately you think more historical than you think why a fantasy, but. I was making it that way and I was being challenged outside of my box to consider what exactly that meant to get me out of that block.
So I also think, you know, we make things really heavy sometimes and we need to. Think about the layers of why things are heavy to us. But I think perfectionism is one of those things. A, no book is perfect. B, I don't want perfect when I write either. I, I actually, I think. Sometimes too, we put ourselves in different categories.
My chapter, let's say I'm on chapter 15 of my career. Maybe Stacy, you're not far behind on chapter 10, but somebody who's starting out at chapter one thinks they should be at chapter 15. So, You know, I don't compare myself to other people's careers and their various chapters. And I also refuse to compare myself to someone who's not writing in the genres I'm writing in.
So people will say, Oh, I'm not a Stephen King or I'm not a JK Rowling or I'm not a VE Schwab. Well, hell no, nobody is held. They aren't even half the time. So why are you putting yourself there? So comparative itis perfectionism, it's the devil of moving forward. I have this theory around what I like to write that frees me of those pressures.
And it's, I like writing B books. And some of my colleagues will say to me, B books, what does that mean? I am happy to be entertained. That is my goal. If I'm entertained writing and the books that I read are entertaining to me, I've won, I've achieved. Can you tell me who won the Oscar in 2020? I can tell you everything there is to know about Star Wars and the Avengers and all of that stuff, but that is entertainment.
They're never going to win the Oscars. There is a dissection of that. And I think sometimes we get in our head about what it is to be an author, a bestseller in various categories, all the things. And I think you just really have to strip that apart. And it goes back to your, why it's not my why.
Yeah. I totally agree. And My clients struggle with the same. I struggle with the same often. I'll find myself comparing. I'll find myself picking up one of those beautiful, beautiful books on my shelf. And then I go, you know what? I'm human. And comparison is that is a, that's a normal thing.
And I catch it. And what's important for me, what you said is that, you know, remembering that this is a flexible and fluid thing. And, and for some of us like me, that is not a natural state. I am not necessarily a flexible nor fluid human being, but that is the key to moving around, the mental hurdles that we have is, can you recognize where you're getting hung up?
Are you willing to come at it from a different perspective? The first idea is just an idea. It's not the best idea and more will come. And are you doing what you like? And can you pull your focus back into now versus an outcome out there that you can't control anyway? A publishing outcome or a, you know, who's going to like it or, you know, really where's it going to sit in the world.
I mean, you cannot always control that. So focus on the now.
So a lot of writers struggle with accountability and finding the time to write. Now, you are a very busy person. So how do you work it
in? Okay, so it's interesting. I've gone through a couple I am 51 years old now. So just to put this into perspective, we're talking about publishing in my late 30s.
So when my girls were younger. My time was adaptable, right? So it was all about systems and processes for me to find 20 minutes here and there. It's very much on the move, mom, taxi, you know, the drill, like all the things and. Working a career, a separate career outside of that.
So I tended to be a weekend warrior. Weekends were, were my space either in the evenings when the girls are hanging out with their friends or, you know, whatever was going on. And my husband gave me that latitude too. And what was important was everybody knew I was writing a book. Right. So that was important to me and they had things they were doing that were important to them.
So this was also a teachable moment for my daughters, right? This is mommy's goal, help support mommy. And I'll tell you what's going on in this goal. So yeah, my husband named general fax. My daughter named, you know, the dog, you know, and they can see it like, you know, that, that, that was involving them in my process, but knowing that I was busy and I thought it was important to show them that I was doing things for myself and I have a great support with my daughters.
Now my time is more my own, but do I change it necessarily? No, because I'm still, you know, holding down the day job and all the other things. But I give myself a lot more grace than I did early on. I don't write every day. It's a misnomer that doesn't work for me, unless I'm under a tight schedule and I am pushing.
But again, I'm one of those people that needs to put my money where my mouth is and if I'm saying I'm doing something, then I show up for something. If I have somebody else there, knowing I'm accountable. I have those systems and things in place for me. But it's also cyclical for me. There are times where I'm really pushing, really achieving, really writing in a year.
And there are a lot of times where I'm just consuming, I am reading rabidly or, and sometimes it's just for entertainment. I, I'm still working on my deconstruction all the time, but there are times I just want to shut it off and enjoy a good story. Because again, I'm an entertainment person. Like I like.
To be entertained. And I like doing the artistic creative side of entertaining. So for me, it's all about the systems. I sync up between my iPhone, my iPad, and my computer through, you know, the cloud systems that you can, you can encourage and the apps and things. And then I start to cultivate. Where everything is and it all comes together and then I start to, you know, kind of play with play in the garden, if you will, and facilitate that further.
And I also allow myself something I talk about in writer fuel is what I like to call pivot, pause or quit. I'm okay with quitting and I think quitting gets a bad rap because some ideas are not worth it. And they don't excite me further on. So yeah. That's what I do. I just really put systems in place and I find an hour or two on a weekend.
Sometimes it may be an all day thing, but usually people around the house are all gone, you know, and it's just me and the dog.
I just love what you said there about incorporating the people in your life that love you into your process. And putting them inside that that's really beautiful. And that is something that my daughter who is going to be 8 she's starting to come on board.
She's starting to write her own little stories and it's something cool that we get to share. And so that's that was just a really wonderful takeaway. So what's the legacy?
Yeah, it really is for them, right? They know that when things later in life, I, I did that. Yeah. And,
and your tip about syncing up so you can, wherever you are, whenever you have the 20 minutes, you know, if you're on your phone, if you can open up your Google doc and just do it today.
Right. Yeah. Exactly.
What's the best piece of writing advice you think you've ever received?
Oh, my first coach. Do you want to be perfect or do you want to be published? I love that. Cause you know, what happened was I finished my draft quite quickly. We're going through it and it was editing time. And this also prompted my editing process today, but I was going round and round on one particular fight scene, tweaking this sentence, tweaking that sentence, moving this paragraph.
Although the content really wasn't changing. And he was like, Do you think it's better? And I'm like, it's better. He was like, on a scale of one to 10, how much better? The needle wasn't moving that much in that editing piece. And he was like, Cassie move on. It's good enough. You know, it's like, do you want to be perfect or published?
And so I was like, damn, I want to be published. Well, let's move on to the other sections that need editing.
He put me and I was like, damn, you know, cause you can, you can spiral in the editing phase and never ever. And that's kind of what put me in my B mindset of entertainment, that it doesn't have to be perfect as well as I don't go beyond a three round editing role anymore on any section. So, I just don't and I also still utilize editors, so it's not as if.
My end all be all is with me. It'll go to the editor and then I'll come back and then wrap it up. That's it. It's done. It's it's published time. Yeah,
great takeaway. The book honestly is will never be done. It could never be done. We could always go more right.
Yeah. Yeah, so that's a great piece of advice. . Do you want to be perfect or do you want to be published. Do you want to be dead or do you want to be dead with a published book? Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.
So what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers who are working on their first fiction novels a little later in life?
So yeah, my sassy nose is like later in life does not mean you're dead and it's over. So bad. So sad. You missed the boat kind of thing. I mean, measure your life and experience you writing a book about something of the same topic versus a 20 year old who may have not had the depth and breadth of experience that you've had in your life.
You know, the only barrier is you. Right. So I tend to think. That later in life has actually more depth. There's this saying, right? They say, write what you know, and I don't know what it's like to have magic. I don't know what it's like to be on the moon, all of those things, but I know how things make me feel.
And that's the That's so important. Everything is how your characters feel. And there could be younger people that have had experiences that I have never had or wanted or all of those things, but there could be experiences that I have empathy from and being a part of or seeing my friends that I can pull from that others can't.
So to me, age is a number, baby. Like there are, I know of an 80 year old author who's a romance author and she's been writing for like a decade. Does anybody know that? Probably not. Maybe they do. I don't know. Who cares? It's brilliant. So, you know, put it in perspective. If you want to write, it's, it's bring in your experience.
Don't hold off to say, Oh, I should have done that in my twenties. I should have done that in my thirties. I should have done that in my forties, fifties. Well, here I am. You know, I just, yeah, I don't, I just, I'm like, you're not dead. You know, that's the only thing that can stop you. Right.
So. It's never too late and the only permission you need is your own is your own.
Exactly. It's a, it's a writing baby. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your honesty your generosity of spirits and being open and vulnerable. Cause this is going to help somebody out there who is on chapter one, like you said, who, who's not on chapter 15, maybe thinks they need to be there.
They're actually on chapter one of this writing journey. And so it's going to help them. So what are you currently working on as an author? I know you have some fun stuff coming up.
Yeah. So I love poetry and I started taking poetry classes back in 2019 and red is coming out on April 22nd.
It's a poetry and prose book that's contemporary twist on the little red riding hood. I love my twists. I especially love fairy tale twists. So that was extremely fun to pull together. It's been something I've been wanting to do for five years. And Yeah, it's coming out in April, which April for Trivia Pursuit is National Poetry Month, so I'm excited if you want to honor me and supporting poetry, certainly look at my book.
I'm also querying later this summer for a YA fantasy project I've been working on, which is super exciting. So I'm looking to do the hybrid thing. Yeah. Any agents listening to this? It's exciting stuff. And then this summer I'm working on some super secret, secret projects that I'm really encouraged by and coaching wise.
Right now I have my accountability that's open and it's brief story coaching. And then I have my power hour consulting side, which is more business side. Stuff of the industry, and I'm hoping to open up map your story. It's been Paul later this year. So that's, that's kind of what I've been doing.
Right.
Great. Where's the best place for people to connect with you?
Yeah. So on my coaching side, it's sassy writing coach. com just how it sounds. And that's my coaching website. All the links are there. All the fun stuff to find me, including my books. And if you're like, Oh, I'm curious about this YA fantasy or the poetry or any of that, you can find me at authors.
C M Newell dot com and all my stuff's there.
And I will make sure I put all those links in the show notes
Thank you again for your time, Cassie. It was wonderful to connect with you, and I wish you all the best. I look forward to Red coming out in April 2024.