In this #amwriting podcast episode, Jennie Nash talks about what it means to “play big” on the page. Using Ian McEwan’s choice to write his latest novel without research as an example, she shows how true impact comes when a writer fully owns their story and brings it to life with depth and intention. She encourages listeners to think about their own top five most powerful reads, notice what made those books unforgettable, and aim to create that same sense of bigness in their own writing
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Hey, it’s Jess Lahey. If you’ve been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that yes, I am a writer—but my true love, my deepest love, is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, community organizations, nonprofits, and businesses, and do everything from lunch-and-learns to community reads to just teaching about the topics that I’m an expert in—from the topics in The Gift of Failure: engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated—and, yes, the topic of overparenting and what that does to kids’ learning. Two topics around The Addiction Inoculation are substance use prevention in kids, and—what I’ve been doing lately that’s the most fun for me, frankly—is combining the two. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary, when we’re talking about it in the context of learning, motivation, self-efficacy, competence, and—yes—cognitive development. So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, your nonprofit, your business—I would love to come. You can go to JessicaLahey.com. Look under the menu option “Speaking,” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There’s also a lot of information on my website about what I do—there are videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch, and I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount—so that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast.
Hope to hear from you.