Middle Grade Ninja Episode 61: Author Barbara Shoup Returns

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My friend Barbara Shoup returns to the podcast to share lessons from her writing life and her new book about writing, A COMMOTION IN YOUR HEART. She talks candidly about struggling with depression, finding joy in writing even when it doesn’t lead to great fame and fortune, and the challenge of bringing forth something as ethereal as a story using only language. We chat about author estate planning, learning from writers you don’t like personally, ethically basing characters on real people, the cruelest editor rejection ever, and so much more.

And make sure you see Barbara Shoup face the 7 Questions, hear her first podcast interview, and read my review of Looking for Jack Kerouac. 

Barbara Shoup is the author of eight novels for adults and young adults, most recently An American Tune and Looking for Jack Kerouac, and the co-author of Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process. Her short fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous small magazines, as well as in The Writer and the New York Times travel section. The recipient of the PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, she is the Writer-in-Residence at the Indiana Writers Center and a faculty member at Art Workshop International.

For writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, autobiography and memoir, and from amateurs to professionals, this book about the creative process is a book for writers everywhere interested in learning more about the craft of writing. A perfect gift for writers of all ages and levels of experience, A Commotion in Your Heart: Notes on Writing and Life takes the reader from the author's childhood dream of being a writer through the ups and downs of publishing. She tells her story with highly relatable vignettes that focus on her own personal moments of clarity about what writing is (and what writing isn't), sharing the pleasures and lessons of more than 40 years of experience teaching writing.

Part memoir and part writing workshop, A Commotion in Your Heart: Notes on Writing and Life offers writing inspiration and practical advice for authors at every stage of their writing journey. 

With short, easy to read chapters, A Commotion in Your Heart: Notes on Writing and Life will inspire veteran authors as well as beginning writers just getting started. And when writing is especially difficult, or when writer's block sets in, award-winning author Barbara Shoup is full of encouraging wisdom.

A Commotion in Your Heart: Notes on Writing and Life is for anyone who understands that writing isn't just a hobby... It's a necessary part of living fully.

BarbaraShoup.com