What makes an agent care about your work? What makes an agent care so much that they keep thinking about your manuscript, bringing it up to their friends, their colleagues–and maybe even editors? 

It’s emotional investment. While agents love all of the other aspects that go into your story, caring about your character is what makes a book memorable. 

But how do you strategically create empathy, intrigue and anticipation in just a small amount of time–and ensure that it sustains through the last page? 

In our three days together, you’ll learn how to use Banner Days (a trick to have the reader looking forward and backward, imagining how characters and situations will interact–giving surprise, delight and grounding), Truth as Structure (cleverly choosing who–from the narrator to the reader to the main character to the antagonist–knows what when), and Proactivity & Misbehavior (purposely keeping your characters active, sympathetic, imperfect, at a crossroads–and full of agency). 

Derek is a kind, compassionate teacher–and we can’t wait to see how he explores these vital skills for creating a work that’s fresh, exciting, and unputdownable. 

This course can be completed on your schedule, in any time zone. Everything will be up for 30 days, replays are available for all events, and your odds of feedback are the same whether you attend live or watch the replay. 

The event is October 24-26, 2023. All materials will be available for 30 days for replay.

There are many things we love about Anne Elliott. Not only is she smart, compassionate, and an author who sees the world through a literary lens–but she’s able to bring this nuanced way of making meaning into the classroom.

Her classes feel like MFA experiences, and her students leave with a new appreciation for interpreting not just characters, setting, and conflict–but they learn to make scenes so lifelike, they see the same in the real world around them. The result is an immersive experience that teaches how to make your pages so vivid, they won’t let you go–and have all the more likelihood of staying in agents’ minds long after they’ve closed their laptops for the night.

This preview shows Anne’s definitions of terms we’ll cover in our three days together: Habit, Action, Establishing Normal–power structures and the powerful who try to maintain status quo–how characters learn to speak up, step into their authenticity–and, in the process, take risks, create intimacy, and build the world that they want to live in.

This workshop includes daily classes: 

• Habit, Action & Establishing Normal
• Sanctuary, Danger, Risk & Intimacy
• Uprisings, Conflict & Characters Speaking Up

Interactive workshop forums: 

• Action
• Dialogue
• Daily Conflict
• How Characters React

Live, Interactive Events:

• Q&A With Anne: Ask Her Anything
• Live First Pages Panel with Anne 

Everything can be done at your convenience, and all events come with a replay. This event is designed to work with all time zones, so no one has to get up in the middle of the night.

This event is open to all genres, age groups, and experience levels.

The event is June 13-15, 2023. All materials will be available for 30 days for replay.

Want to join Shirin’s FREE class, Your Path To Publication? Sign up free below.

The replay will be available at the same link.

Writers will be able to search by genre and age group to help them find you, login will be smoother, and we’ll be rolling out plenty of features for authors, agents, and editors alike. 

We’re adding an #MSWL Live component, where agents and editors can come to special events, present their wishes to hundreds of writers at a time, and we’ll turn these into polished, personable clips for profiles. It’s been our experience that many writers will trust you more, and fear you less, if they can hear your voice and see your facial expressions. This means they’re more likely to add you to their submission lists.

We’re also expanding our podcast and live events to include more direct interaction between agents, editors and authors, with interactive editing conversations, Q&A, and more. This both helps the community (writers often learn by doing and example) and shows off what it would be like to work with you, so that–hopefully–you get more and better submissions from writers who are a good editorial match and willing to put in that work. 

Agents and editors, we don’t believe in your working for free, so there will be an honorarium for all of our events. Let us know if you’re interested. 

Profiles can now link to your social media and #MSWL posts across platforms. So if you said peace out, #SpaceKaren, you can link to your Instagram, Mastodon, Hive, or more. 

We’re also working on exciting new technology to help the submission process become more human, less intimidating, and more accessible to all. 

A few more coming updates in this first round:

• Save your favorite agents
• Create a user account to take notes for you
• Record an audio file of name pronunciation for each profile
• Include correct pronouns
• Update with less tech knowledge
• #MSWL Live: Agents discuss what they want *within* each genre, and these clips turn into a podcast + video clips for their profiles 
• Vote for the genre theme of the next agent #MSWL panel + events
• Email digest of tweets, posts & more by genre

For MSWL’s 10th anniversary (we know! We can’t believe it either!) we’ve invited KK Hendin, co-founder, who made us legit within four minutes of the first tweet.

***The next MSWL day is February 16, on Twitter *and* on your favorite platforms***

We talk about how we went from Tumblr to a real life site to a site where agents and editors could update their own wishes (Jessica and KK were updating them manually before that), the stories we’ve heard of how it’s impacted writing life, and the amazing, serendipitous coincidences that made it all possible.

Please note that, as of Monday, ManuscriptWishList.com will go into version 4.0! Check out the site for a list of upcoming updates (rolling out slowly over the next few weeks).

Please mark your calendars! Our next official #MSWL day is February 16, 2023. 

There will be a whole new site, which will be faster, shinier, and easier to use, starting this month–so please don’t be alarmed if you visit one day, and everything looks different!

You’ll be able to search by genre and age group to find your best agent match, easily make a free account and save your favorite agents, and we’ll be rolling out plenty of features for authors, agents, and editors alike.

Profiles will soon come with links to agents’ social media and #MSWL posts across platforms. So if they said peace out, #SpaceKaren, you can view their wishes on Instagram, Mastodon, Hive, or more.

We’re adding an #MSWL Live component, where agents and editors can come to special events and present their wishes, and we’ll turn these into a podcast as well as polished, personable clips for their profiles. The theme for this month (since it’s Valentine’s month) is Romance, Women’s Fiction, Book Club Fiction & More. It’s been our experience that it’s easier for writers to choose a good fit if they can hear an agent’s voice and see their facial expressions, so this can help you know if you might be a personality fit (remember, you’ll be calling your agent for decades to come!) before you submit your work.

You’ll be able to vote for your genre for future months! Stay tuned for that.

We’re also expanding our podcast and live events to include more direct interaction between agents, editors and authors, with interactive editing conversations, Q&A, and more. This both helps the community (writers often learn by doing and example) and helps agents see that you’re a good editorial match and willing to put in that work. You can see an early experiment with our Mystery Agent program here. 

We’re also working on exciting new technology to help the submission process become more human, less intimidating, and more accessible to all.

As always, if you have any trouble, our help desk is standing by.

Happy 2023!

All best,
Jessica, Julie, KK, and the #MSWL Team

Have you ever had a publishing question you couldn’t answer with Google? Or maybe you’re just stressed out and wondering if it’s time to pivot, panic, or be patient?

What if you could have a conversation with a person instead of finding more conflicting advice online?

Well, now you can.

Last week, Julie and I tried an experiment. For months, we’ve had our friend Mary, our Minister of Writing Happiness, make random calls to our members to pep them up, talk about their writing, and just generally make them feel better. The world is hard! (Seems even harder than usual the past few years.) And Mary’s voice is like sunshine on the phone.

But last week, we took Mary’s call list, and started calling writers out of the blue. This was great fun for us (and we’re amazed how many of you picked up!).

You’re all working on such interesting things, and it’s great to hear your voices. It was so much fun, we thought Hey, maybe we should do this on purpose.

We also noticed many of you are going through the same things—but felt alone in your creative process. It was wonderful for us to be able to offer advice, consolation, and reasons to be hopeful.

So, if you’d like a pep talk meets advice call, want to help your fellow writers, and you’re free this Thursday, 2pm-4pm ET, opt in for a call that will turn into a podcast. We’ll record, heavily edit, promise cut anything you don’t want in there (just let us know), anonymize partially or fully if you wish (“This is Joe from North Dakota, and I just got the worst rejection…” or even just “I’m a writer, and I got the worst rejection”) and turn it into a 30-minute podcast episode.

The result, we hope, will be a window into writing life, how you’re not alone in your feelings—and why you and our writing community should feel hopeful. Until we find a way for all of you to meet—we think most of you would be friends!—this is a great way to connect.

Interested? Fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch with as many of you as we can.

We look forward to talking with you soon!

All best,
Jessica & Julie

So you’ve got your query. You’ve got your first page. You have some idea of how all this works. Then the rejections start coming in. How do you pivot? How do you know if you’re on the right track? Are you making easily avoided mistakes, or do you just need to be patient?

In this workshop, we’ll go over your rejections, queries, first pages, submission list, personalization, overall strategy, and more. You’ll leave feeling confident, knowing you’re making the best possible choices for your book–and supported by your new writer community.

Each day includes a lesson (either recorded or live, going over the work you submitted), an exercise, and a group to help you polish.

We’ll also have two live panels–one to interpret your rejections, and one with agents John Cusick (Folio Literary) and Lauren Spieller (TriadaUS) to go over your queries (as many as we can, chosen at random by genre, in the time allotted–but even if yours isn’t chosen, this is still a great learning experience).

This event is open to all genres, age groups, and experience levels.

View the full schedule of events here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/three-day-submission-strategy-workshop-calendar

The event is January 24-26, 2023. All materials will be available for 30 days for replay.

Some of Sarah’s favorite accounts to follow:

https://www.instagram.com/mixtusmedia/
https://www.instagram.com/theunkarenkaren/
https://www.instagram.com/romantically_inclined/
https://www.instagram.com/the.author.apothecary/

We also talk about food writing and best how to make it work (what book isn’t better with gorgeous food?), world building in (mostly) contemporary settings, and what special elements you need if you want your holiday work to be successful.

Amy E. Reichert, author of six novels, loves to write stories that end well with characters you’d invite to dinner. A wife, mom, amateur chef, Fix-It Mistress, a volunteer baby snuggler, and cider enthusiast, she earned her MA in English Literature and serves on her library’s board of directors. She’s a member of Tall Poppy Writers.

She is the author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake, Luck, Love & Lemon Pie, The Simplicity of Cider, and The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go, and more.

Learn more about her here: www.amyereichert.com/