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How can giving your characters two bad choices raise the stakes in your stories? And how do you ask for the feedback you need from a critique group, and disregard the rest? Erin Dionne shares her writing and publishing tips after more than 20 years as an author and professor.
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Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She's also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Why two bad choices beat an easy choice and a hard one
- How pre-writing in a notebook builds confidence in your characters before you draft
- Giving characters dimension beyond the bubble of their story
- How to ask for the feedback you want, and protect the core of your story
- Forming an indie press with your critique group
- How to get school visits through librarians and conferences
You can find Erin at ErinDionne.com.
Transcript of Interview with Erin Dionne
Jo: Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She's also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing. So welcome to the show, Erin.
Erin: I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
Jo: There's lots to talk about. First up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
Erin: Sure. Like some of the other people that you've talked to on the podcast, I've been a huge reader and writer ever since I was a little kid, but when I was about seven, I realised that it was people that wrote books. I thought that they came out of a machine or something.
When I found that out, I thought, oh my goodness, I love reading stories, so being a writer must be the best job in the world. So I was single-mindedly focused on being an author as a career after that.
I wrote off and on in school. I wrote short stories and things. When I went to college, I got a degree in English and communications, and then I went and got my MFA in creative writing.
While I was in school, I also decided that I wanted to learn about the publishing industry, so I worked as an intern for a local magazine.
Then after I graduated, while I was in grad school, I actually worked in publishing for Houghton Mifflin in their marketing department. I became an editor for a magazine, and then ultimately, I became a professor, and I work at an art school.
It was at that point, finally, when I was surrounded by other creative people, that I thought, “Okay, I've learned all this stuff. I need to actually put it into practice.”
So I got serious about my work in 2005, and my first book came out in 2009, a traditionally published children's book, and I published in the children's book field for the next 11 years.
I released my first indie book in 2021, and now I consider myself a hybrid author. I do some books traditionally published, some books indie, and I really like being able to have control in different aspects of my career.
Jo: Well, that's great. Wow, you've just done so much across the whole industry. That's fantastic. I do want to ask you then, before we get into the book, you did an MFA, and obviously you love studying. I also love studying. I understand that.
I wonder where you stand now on whether people need to study so much. I found personally, as someone who also enjoys studying, that sometimes I make myself not do the practice. I'd rather sometimes be learning than doing.
So how can people balance learning a lot with actually writing the book?
Erin: Yes, I think that's a great question. For me, my undergraduate degree in English was not creative writing focused. We didn't have that. So I thought, “I need to learn how to write.” What I really learned in grad school was how to revise and how to teach.
I think now, 20 years later, with the cost of education, you don't have to have a master's degree to write. You don't have to have a degree in English to write. You have to read a lot, and you have to write a lot.
I think the MFA is great for deep study on your particular genre if you feel like you need to learn more, and I think it's great if you want to teach, but it's not necessary to be a writer.
To be a writer, you have to write. So sometimes we can hide behind learning and hide behind all kinds of things to avoid doing the work, but what it comes down to is you have to put your butt in the chair and you have to write at some point.
Jo: It's funny, isn't it? I like the “hide behind the learning.” I still struggle with it because I love learning so much. I also just finished another master's degree. I can't help myself.
I do a lot of research for all my books, and I almost have to just pull myself up sometimes and say, “Look, do you really need to do any more research in order to write this novel?”
Erin: Exactly.
Jo: Okay. Well, let's get into the book. So you start writing with characters first, and other people, like me, often start with a theme or a question or a place or something.
So talk about your process of creating characters and this bad choices idea as well.
Erin: Sure. Most of my books start with a character. Like you, I'm a discovery writer, but I love to do all my discovery work in pre-writing phases, and I pre-write by hand. I'm a big proponent of using a notebook. I carry a notebook with me wherever I go, and I have specific notebooks that are for specific projects.
Most of my pre-writing is character-based. I really want to learn about who this person is, what do they want, what are they going after in their life and in the story, and what do they need?
Wants and needs are always a big one for me, because I feel like a character should be able to articulate their want, but they don't always know what their need is. That's up to us as the author to identify that.
Then through the course of the story, I always think about it in terms of the character is going after what they want, but they're going to get their need met by the end of the story. That brings satisfaction to the reader when a character gets their need met.
So I take a lot of time to try to figure out what that is, because for me, that's going to drive the story. I really have to understand the character's world before I begin.
When I feel like I have a really good handle on who these people are that the book is about, I'll do a beat sheet, like what Jessica Brody was talking about on your show earlier in August. I'll do a beat sheet to get some general ideas of plot points, and then I'm ready to write. Then that's where the bad choices come in.
If you think about a character and they get to a crossroads in a story, lots of times the first thing that we think about are an easy choice and a hard choice.
So for example, if we have a character who's 16 years old, and she's grounded, and there's a party on Friday night that she wants to go to, one choice is for her to just stay home and then hear about the party.
The other choice is for her to sneak out and go to the party, and obviously sneaking out and going to the party could have higher stakes and better consequences. But that's also an easy choice, and both you and your reader know where the character's going to go.
If you give your character two bad choices, that character is going to go to the party no matter what. So are they going to sneak out and have a friend pick them up, or are they going to sneak out and take their mother's car and go to the party?
Now we have two bad choices, higher stakes, and more potential for story drama if they take that bad choice. So I'm always looking at ways that I can have my characters get into a little bit more trouble, make things a little harder.
For me, that comes with those decision points, and giving them two bad options so that the reader knows, ooh, they're going to do something wrong. It's just a matter of what wrong thing are they going to pick?
Jo: So it's interesting, because you said you're a discovery writer, and then you talked about your pre-writing phase and the beat sheet, and now these bad choices.
So are you coming up with these bad choices at the pre-writing, at the beat sheet phase, or do these emerge once you're actually into the drafting process?
Erin: They come out in the drafting process. I have a general idea by the time I start writing of some of the highs and lows of the book, but I don't know how the character is going to get there.
Because I know my character really well, I can write with confidence, and I know that I'm going to figure out the path that they're going to take.
Jo: The word pre-writing, maybe you could talk more about that, because I feel like some people listening are like, “I don't even know what that means.”
So what is pre-writing for you?
Erin: Brainstorming. I just throw down in my notebook all kinds of things about my characters. Everything from the way they look to what they think about, hobbies that they have, people that are important in their lives, people that have influenced them in some way.
I make lists. If I'm writing about a young character, I make lists of things that are in their backpack, or I'll think about what their school schedule is, who their friends are, what their family situation is, and really try to figure out the dynamics of the world around their want, and why do they want this thing that they're going after.
So I will spend three or four months just getting these ideas down on paper. I'll write letters from my character to me. And all of this is building confidence in who my character is so that I can inhabit them fully when I start to write.
Jo: Wow, that is so interesting, and I have to say I've never done anything like that. Again, it's so fascinating, isn't it?
I might spend all my research time on the mythology behind a particular place. I'm often fascinated in places where there's been a lot of death and killing and blood soaked into the ground, because these places have a historical and often religious depth to them, and then I'll stick a character there.
Erin: Yes, it's just two different ways of coming at the same problem, right? And that's the beauty of writing, is we all do it in our own way, which is what makes our stories different and interesting.
Jo: Totally. Well then, if somebody finds their characters are not interesting enough, maybe someone is more like me and they want to become more like you, how might they address this? How could they look at some of the common issues with characters?
What are some of your tips if people want to enrich their characters before they write?
I mean, you've given us some things there, but I feel like what is in a character's backpack, for me, just feels way too detailed.
Erin: I think a lot about the reader experience, and readers want to connect with characters, and they want characters to feel real. I think sometimes as writers, we confuse that idea that a character is interesting with making them angsty or having all of these heavy issues around them.
I like to think about characters in terms of dimension. What else exists in this person's life outside of the bubble of their story? I don't mean things that we don't see on the page, but we all have different interests, and we all have different fears that may or may not come up, depending on what's going on in our lives.
So creating a character that has multiple facets, and things then bleed into the story. I can give you an example. There's a book by Angie Thomas, a young adult novel called On the Come Up, and the main character wants to be a rapper. She has a family history of performance, and that's her goal.
She also characterises herself as a super nerd. She's really into Pokémon and Star Wars and Marvel movies, and these things show up in the way that she sees the world and the analogies that she makes and the references that she makes.
All of a sudden you have this character that has so much more dimension, because she feels more real. So I'm always looking for things that I can pull in from other facets of my character's life to give us a lens that they see the world through.
So thinking about, beyond what's happening in your story, what do they do in their free time? What are the things that they would reference when talking to a friend?What are some of the inside jokes maybe that they have, or cultural elements that they would carry through?
Even just sprinkling in a couple of those things, all of a sudden your character becomes richer for your reader.
Jo: How do you take that further and turn that deep character into plot points on your beat sheet?
Erin: So I always think about, how is the character moving through their life and their story? What type of story am I telling in terms of genre? And then how do those things intersect?
So I have a book called Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking, and the character is solving a mystery, but she's also really good at math. So she uses geometry proofs as logical paths to help her solve the mystery.
I am not good at math, so I had to figure all of that out for her. Then all of a sudden, this character has a very different type of problem, and she's literally using her logical problem-solving skills to solve it.
So there are those moments where we can see how these other elements intersect with our characters' lives, just like they would if things were happening to us in real life. You use the skills that you have.
I think that also ultimately ends up making you more confident when you approach the page, and readers can sense that confidence in your work.
Jo: Yes. What are your thoughts on character flaws? This is another thing that everyone emphasises.
Do you focus on flaws, or is it more those wants and needs?
Erin: I think in creating characters, everybody has flaws, right? So I don't so much think about what is their major flaw in this story, but in terms of getting their need met, usually their need somehow feeds into a flaw.
Maybe they're a character who needs to be more generous, so by nature they're behaving in a way that's more selfish. Or maybe they're a character who needs to have stronger relationships, and so their flaw would then come out of that need, and they are a little bit more withdrawn or standoffish.
So over the course of the story, the events of the story cause them to change, right? The experiences that they have cause them to move a little bit further over on the continuum to getting that need met.
Jo: Another thing I think about a lot is characters in series. As I said, I do character a bit different to you. I'm more of the Lee Child, Jack Reacher vein, or James Bond, where the characters stay similar in each adventure and the plot moves around them.
For people writing series, and you write cosy mysteries, sometimes there are little things we can do.
If people want to have a long-running series, how should they construct characters in that way so that you're not running out of ideas for that character?
Erin: That's a great question, and one that I've been wrestling with with my cosy mysteries. The way that I am addressing it is I'm acknowledging the experiences that she has from book to book.
So in the first book, she gets herself into trouble solving a mystery, and she gets captured by the criminal. Then in the second book she's struggling with that. She's having nightmares. She's got a little bit of PTSD.
So now she has a new problem that she has to wrestle with for herself that has never happened to her before. So in that type of a series, where it's not so episodic, where you do have a longer line, you can pull and build from book to book.
You can also build in overarching issues that take two or three books, or four or five books to resolve, whether that's a larger external mystery or a larger character issue that you want to explore.
Lots of books have on-again, off-again romances, will they or won't they, that add to the stakes, and that's also a way that you can explore how the character is dealing with relationships.
What's preventing her from connecting with that other person? Why is she skittish? What would cause her to trust? What happens when trust is broken again?
So I think that there are all different ways to come at it, depending on the type of character you're creating and the type of book that you're writing, and also what type of audience you have for your stories.
There are certain expectations depending on genre for certain audiences. So I think having an understanding of what your audience's expectations are and what it is that you're writing is also really important.
Jo: Yes, the longer the series goes on, I mean, if your character's already been kidnapped and has PTSD in book two, by book 20, they're pretty beaten up.
Erin: She's going to be a mess.
Jo: Exactly, and then you have to keep thinking about how many awful ways they can be attacked. It can get pretty tough for our characters. But then, happy people in happy land, as I think James Scott Bell says, is not a story that anyone wants to read.
Erin: Exactly. You just have to come up with new ways to torture them.
Jo: Exactly. Now, just coming back to the book, you have a great chapter on the art of giving critique, and you also talk about receiving it as well.
A lot of writers go to classes or writers' groups and get eviscerated, often by other writers, for whatever reasons. Personally, I don't do group work. I hire an editor, a professional editor.
How can we give critique better and receive critique better, and also not even take it from people who we don't value?
Erin: Those are great questions, and there's a lot of things to unpack in there. In terms of the way that we give critique, I talk about in the book how I had an epiphany in my daughter's second grade classroom watching their writer's workshop.
I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is the way that I've been teaching writing and have been taught, to just read your story or hand your story over and just take whatever feedback comes for you.” It was the exact opposite of what I did in my real professional life.
I've been in a critique group for over 25 years, the same group. That's pretty long. That's a long time to share your work with people. What I realised is we ask for the feedback that we want.
Most of the time, those of us who are writers, we know where we're struggling and what we're not doing well and what we need help with.
So when I turn over a piece of writing to my group, or when I'm working with my students and we're sharing work with one another, I always say, “Identify the areas that you feel like you're doing well, identify the areas where you need help, and make sure you tell the person where you are in your process.”
I've been a professional writer for 15, 17 years, and when I'm working in a brand new draft, if I'm giving something to my critique group and I haven't even finished the book, I don't want to lose that momentum on the story I'm working on.
So I tell them, “This is brand new. I need some help figuring out this problem, but I also want your encouragement to finish.” And they deliver.
They also give me a little extra stuff on the side, which is great, but I'm asking for what I want. I'm not telling them, “I only want happy things. I only want to hear good things.” I'm asking them to be honest, but I really believe that guiding people into giving the feedback that you're looking for is really helpful.
I think it's incredibly important. So identifying those strengths and weaknesses is key. I also think giving and receiving critique is a skill that we all have to build. It's not something that comes easily for us, and so practice, and practising with a critique partner that you trust, is really important.
In terms of receiving critique, I think the biggest thing we have to do is identify first, are we ready for feedback? Do you actually want feedback from somebody, or do you want them to tell you that you're doing a great job and this book is awesome? Real feedback is not just sunshine and rainbows.
So being ready for that, I think, is key. Then understanding—I refer to it in my book as the core of your story—the thing that is so important to you that you would not change, but that everything in your story serves.
So whether that's a theme or an idea or the thing that's at the heart of your book, you have to be willing to understand that any feedback that goes to help you strengthen the core is valuable, and then feedback that's taking away from the core of your story, you can disregard.
I'm not going to change this sister relationship in the story, or I'm not going to take that out. So I'm going to disregard anything that tells me I need to take out that portion of the story. If that makes sense.
Jo: Yes, I think a lot of that makes sense. Then again, we're both experienced writers, and I feel like creative confidence is something that you grow into. Writers who are earlier on in the journey, they might have 20 years of non-fiction writing, and then they're writing their first novel.
I think this is really common, where if you've written a lot of non-fiction or different forms of writing and then you try a novel, it's such a different form of writing. Or even if you're trying a different genre.
I feel like taste is such a big deal as well. I have a lot of writer friends, and some of their writing and my writing, they're just not the same. I wouldn't want their critique and they wouldn't want mine when it comes down to it.
How do we get this creative confidence around taking critique?
Erin: I do think it's a skill. I also think that practising advocating for your work is really important.
So if a critique goes off the rails, being able to say, “Whoa, this isn't helpful.” Or directing somebody back, “Hey, I want to talk about X, Y, Z. I want to talk about plot and character, not about my dialogue.”
I think that that's another skill to build, and I encourage people to actually practise and have some of that language ready when you go into a critique, so that you can say, “Hey, this isn't helpful to me right now.”
Or if you're in a group, make sure that the other people in the group, if they see something going off the rails and you get that frozen, deer-in-headlights look, that somebody else can step in and say, “Hey, let's shift gears a little bit.” And you can stop a critique that's not going well.
I think the difference, though, is understanding that feedback is part of the process in whatever capacity, whether it's a critique group or an editor or a reader. This is part of what it means to be a creative person who puts work out in the world.
So developing this skill and practice is important, because it's coming. Right? And sometimes in ways we can't control.
Jo: Yes, there's going to be a review eventually, and you're going to have to take it. That 25-year group, that's so interesting to me.
What have you and the other people in that group learned and done in order to keep that together so long? How can we all foster groups like that?
Erin: It's pretty remarkable, and I'm so grateful to all of them. We've definitely grown together. I think the biggest piece of it is we all respect one another in our work.
We write very different things. Not everybody writes children's books. Some of us write children's and adults. We've had different phases where people have been doing short stories or novels, or they bring an essay.
So it's being open and receptive and understanding. This might not be something that I am super familiar with, but I'm going to help you in the best way that I can.
Again, having that communication around what it is that we're sharing, being able to say, “This is what I need help with.”
It's really helpful to be on the receiving end of that and say, “Oh, okay, I may not understand the topic really well, or I may not read this type of book, but I can definitely look at your dialogue, or I can definitely look at the openings of your chapters and tell you whether or not I feel like I'm being pulled in.”
So being able to communicate with one another, respecting one another's work, trusting one another, and all of that takes time. So putting that time in and respecting the work that other people are doing, I think, is really important.
Jo: Yes, and it brings up something else in the author community, which is the comparisonitis.
Someone else's book has done really well and mine hasn't. Why aren't I as successful as that person?
So has that come up at all? Because I imagine in 25 years, some people have done really well with book deals, some people haven't. How has that gone?
Erin: Yes, that's a great point. My whole career I've been about creative community, and I really believe a rising tide lifts all boats.
So for years I was actually the only person in our group who was traditionally published. We've actually formed an indie press together now that we're indie releasing our members' books, which is another road we can go down.
I think it's inevitable, right, to have those feelings of jealousy, or that you're not good enough, and to just recognise that those feelings happen and that's okay, and to bring it back to the work.
We're learning together, we're working together, and everybody's running their own race. I'm going to help you as best I can run yours, and you're going to help me run mine, and eventually we're going to get across the finish line. It doesn't matter what order we cross in, whatever that finish line is.
So having that kind of generosity, I think, trumps everything. That's what I always go back to when I have those moments of, “Oh, I wish my book had,” or, “Oh, I wish I had done X or gotten Y.”
I think about the community that I'm in and how generous people are and what can I share with other people to help us all get a little bit further along, and that usually sets me back on the right path.
Jo: I think that's good. I was going to say generosity is a good word to use.
So let's come to that indie press then. What made you decide to go that way, and how are you doing that amongst a group like that?
I think it's becoming a more common thing, but also the practicalities of publishing and marketing can be quite difficult.
Erin: Yes. It was during the pandemic. We were meeting on Zoom, and I may have had maybe one more glass of wine than I should have.
Jo: Excellent. We all did in the pandemic, right?
Erin: During that time… and I had been listening to you for several years at that point.
We were having just a regular critique meeting, and I said, “Hey, we all have these different skills.” One of our critique members is a copywriter, one is a former English teacher, one actually works in publishing in design. We all have these different skills. We're all great critiquers.
I said, “Why don't we learn how to indie publish together?” Because it seems really overwhelming. I wanted to release some projects on my own, and I thought, why not do it with a friend instead?
So we formed Table for 7 Press. They all went along with it. I don't know. All the wine.
Jo: All the wine.
Erin: They got really excited. So we had a couple of conversations about how we would do it. Now what happens is we help one another prepare our projects. We are each responsible for creating our own accounts and uploading our books.
Last year we actually decided that we were going to create an anthology together, and so we each wrote a short story that takes place in one night at one Vietnamese restaurant. Everybody has a different character at the restaurant doing different things at their table. So we published that as a group, called Tonight's Specials.
We used Draft2Digital to do the royalty splitting, and we all promote and we all market it and we all talk about it, and we all have work in the world and we made this thing, which is amazing. It was such a fun experience.
Jo: That is lovely. I think that is a nice way to do it, and having the royalty splitting is so good, because that is a pain in the neck, as you know. The amount of money that you'd be paying each other and trying to split is not tons. You're not splitting a million dollars every month.
Erin: Exactly. We're lucky if we can each buy a cup of coffee.
Jo: Yes, absolutely, and especially after the initial promotional periods.
So anything that you've learned in your indie publishing life that surprised you?
I mean, even if you were listening to this show, or you knew about it intellectually as somebody who studies a lot, obviously. What practically might have surprised you, or that you think people should know?
Erin: It's really fun.
Jo: Oh, that's good.
Erin: It's so fun. I love having the control.
I was surprised at how much I loved doing interior design. I use Vellum, but have played with Draft2Digital. I've played with different formatting software, and that's something that I never would have thought that I would have enjoyed. I'm not a graphic design person.
I've just been delighted. I love learning new things, and so there's so much to learn and there's so many options that it's really exciting.
As somebody who also has had a traditional career and can continue to have one, it's a really nice balance. I can produce works and share them with the world that I know wouldn't fit in a traditional bubble. So I get to make those choices, and I love the control that it gives me.
Jo: Well, that's great. I think the freedom and the creative control and the financial side of it, for me, is still exciting. And starting on a new project, I've just started another book this morning, actually.
Erin: Oh, fantastic.
Jo: You can't stop us, right?
Erin: Right. There's always something new to do.
Jo: Yes, there is. On that as well, I did want to ask you about your school visits and workshops. So on your website, because you do middle grade, you do picture books, chapter books, children's publishing and children's marketing is quite a different beast, I think.
So tell us about these school visits and workshops, and how do these play a part in your author business?
Erin: My school visits are definitely an important component of that. I love being able to go into schools and talk to readers and talk to teachers and librarians about books. They wax and wane for me because I am a full-time professor, and so I have to work around my teaching schedule.
So I'm not one of those people who's doing 30 to 50 school visits a year. I'm a little bit more selective. I tend to stay maybe a little bit more regional with them.
It's an important element for me, and I love being able to connect with readers, and that's the best thing as a children's book author, is seeing a kid who just falls in love with your book and is so excited to talk to you about it.
So it is a significant portion of my business at certain points when I have a new book out, or at certain times of year when I'm maybe a little bit more available around my teaching schedule.
Then the workshops that I do tend to be for writer organisations and talking about craft and craft elements, and those I do regularly all year long. I do a lot of them on Zoom or at conferences or on weekends, and so that portion of it is a little bit easier to fit into my schedule.
I love being able to share craft elements and talk about craft with writers at any level, because, again, that element of sharing and generosity and creating creative community is really important to me. So I'm always looking for opportunities to do that, and I really, really enjoy it.
So talking to readers and talking to writers, it's the best job in the world.
Jo: Well, just back on those school visits in particular, how are you actually getting those in the first place?
How are you marketing to schools and librarians?
Erin: So there's definitely legwork involved. I have presentations that I've refined over the years and practised at local library and school events. I do a lot of outreach to librarians. I join the local state library lists.
I live in New England, in Massachusetts, so the Massachusetts School Library Association, the Massachusetts Reading Association, they have conferences every year.
So I try to pitch myself to go to the conferences, and then you're in front of people who work at a whole bunch of different schools, and you can get school visits that way.
I don't do as much direct marketing out to individual schools anymore, just because typically it's the parent organisations that would bring in authors, through grants and funding, and those parent volunteer leaders change. So I try to always go through the librarians, and then the librarians can take it to their school officials.
So working through those conferences and those organisations, they all have Facebook pages, and so being able to connect with them, and then things spread by word of mouth. So I'm able to get visits that way.
Then, on nice occasions, my book ends up on state reading lists across the United States, and then that's another opportunity where librarians will see books that show up on those lists and invite authors to come in and speak. So I've been very fortunate to have that happen as well at different times in my career.
Then once I go somewhere, it's like anything else. You keep track of who you meet, where you've been, get their email address, and then keep in touch with them and remind them that you're here, and would love to come back to their school, and build those relationships.
Jo: It strikes me from everything you've talked about that you have very much had a long-term view of your career and your relationships and the generosity, and that your career is built because of that, as opposed to trying to achieve something at a specific point.
It's almost like you've just had that long-term view.
Erin: I think it's definitely emerged. I learned and realised very quickly in the traditional sphere that diversification is really important. I'm somebody who's had a bunch of different books published, but I've also been involved in all of the turmoil in the traditional publishing industry.
I've had editors leave. I've had imprints close. I've had books go out of print. So, very quickly I learned that I can't put all my eggs in one basket.
I'm also fortunate in that I have my skills as a teacher that I can incorporate in my writing life in sharing and talking about craft. So it became evident that being able to do lots of different things in the community was beneficial and important to me.
I love being able to talk to new writers who aren't as established. It brings me a level of satisfaction that I did not even expect when I first started this. Being part of the writing community, and learning now about the indie community and being part of that community, I just find it so valuable.
I think that that contributes to longevity, is being able to adapt and change and diversify yourself, and give back.
Jo: Oh, fantastic. Well, it's a great book, and that is Bad Choices Make Good Stories.
So where can people find you and your books online?
Erin: My website is the easiest place. It's ErinDionne.com.
Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Erin. That was great.
Erin: Thank you, Joanna. It was so much fun to talk to you.