192 To celebrate the release of Maggie Smith's new guidebook for writers called Dear Writer : Pep Talks and Practical Advice for a Creative Life, we're bringing back this beloved chat with Maggie about writing, self-trust, and life in the ellipsis! --- What do we do when the future we thought we’d have is wiped clean, and we're stuck in uncertainty? Bestselling author Maggie Smith joins us to talk about life in the in-between and how, even when we’re at a loss, we can still trust ourselves. She also explores the writerly decisions she made in her most recent bestseller (and one of Nadine’s favorite books of all time), You Could Make This Place Beautiful. She closes the conversation with incredible writing advice that will make you want to grab a pen and start writing. Covered in this episode: How to find beauty, even when our lives change in unexpected ways The difference between a midlife crisis and midlife recovery How to turn up the volume of our inner voice and act on it The wise women who’ve inspired Maggie & Nadine in life and in writing Why writing hard things is actually enjoyable Why Maggie wrote her story in real-time rather than waiting What has and hasn’t changed since the publication of You Could Make This Place Beautiful Maggie’s favorite small pleasure–how she’s treating herself well Want more Maggie? Grab a copy of You Could Make This Place Beautiful (now out in paperback), subscribe to her popular Substack For Dear Life , and preorder her forthcoming book, Dear Writer (April, 2025). Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful , Good Bones , The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison , Lamp of the Body , and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change . A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times , The New Yorker , The Paris Review , The Nation, The Best American Poetry , and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet . About Nadine: Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. She is the proud founder of WriteWELL , an online community that helps women reclaim their writing time, put pen to page, and get published. The authors in her community have published countless books and hundreds of essays in places like The New York Times, Vogue, The Sun, The Boston Globe, Longreads , and more. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure , was named book of the year by the...
