Female Main Characters We Love and the Ones We Can’t Stand

We got put in Instagram jail… then spiraled into a Galentine’s deep dive on FMCs: agency, tropes, and ACOTAR takes.

We got put in Instagram jail (for extremely writer reasons)… and then pivoted into a Galentine’s Day episode about female main characters (FMCs): why so many female protagonists feel frustrating in fantasy romance, romantasy, and contemporary romance, and what actually makes a great FMC.

We unpack the traits that make readers root for her—agency, purpose, intellect, and meaningful choices—and why the hero’s journey can be a trap for women characters. Plus: ACOTAR vs Throne of Glass, the return of the manic pixie dream girl, and how writers can “dig deeper” to avoid defaulting to stereotypes.

Question: Who’s your favorite FMC of all time—and what FMC trope are you done with?

Transcript

Cait (00:00)
I got put an Instagram jail

Jenna G Judith (00:01)
Yes, I did too.

Cait (00:02)
We got...

we both on the same day got put in Instagram jail.

Jenna G Judith (00:07)
I think Instagram was just being really mad about life

Cait (00:12)
was really

weird. Mine was like very like, okay, I get it.

context it was not great. ⁓ Mine was like somebody's... I was engaging so like an author posted like what's you know something hilarious that you've had to Google as an author and I was like ⁓ like where to buy drugs in Barcelona.

Jenna G Judith (00:31)
Yeah.

Cait (00:37)
but the way like I worded it, I tried to put it in quotes so it wasn't like, didn't look, I tried to put it in quotes like, but it literally came out like.

Jenna G Judith (00:46)
Okay, that one checks out.

Cait (00:48)
go to the Instagram.

Yeah if you go to the Instagram and it's like you violated community guidelines like you can't send any messages for three days or whatever and it's like here's your quote and it was like where can you buy cocaine in Barcelona?

Jenna G Judith (01:01)
This is what we get. This is what we get for trying.

Cait (01:03)
And I was like, okay, fair. But you didn't read the context of the post. But fine, I will let you. I will let you. And then I started to get things that were like, if you need help with substance abuse, yeah.

Jenna G Judith (01:06)
But.

Okay, that's like next level. I didn't realize it was going to that level.

Cait (01:36)
episode not about Instagram jail, but we wanted to take this time for Galentine's Day.

Jenna G Judith (01:34)
Anyways, now, okay, yes.

Cait (01:46)
to chat about main characters. And we're reading them, we're writing them. It is a tangled web of complication, this topic.

Jenna G Judith (01:49)
Yes, because they're pretty much the reason why we're reading these days.

Cait (02:00)
But let's just talk about it. And I feel like we need to be honest about it and really talk about how we're feeling, things we've read, what's working, what's not working, how we're writing them, and how hard it is.

Jenna G Judith (02:16)
Yeah, because you have probably heard me say how much I dislike about 75 % of female main characters that I read. it just, something doesn't jive with me sometimes. And maybe it's because I'm trying to identify with the character and I'm just not whiny and helpless like in real life.

Cait (02:31)
Thank

Mm-hmm. Sure.

So...

Jenna G Judith (02:42)
You

Cait (02:43)
I have to tell you, I, and you've gotten me way more into fantasy and characters that in romance, like characters that are like, and I think going into fantasy in general, like you are talking about characters that are truly right? Like it's like really hard to, you're in the search for what you, like you're putting women in.

Jenna G Judith (02:44)
Okay.

romance.

Yes. Yeah.

Cait (03:08)
certain situations that are just not real or realistic, right? Like I'm sure you're trying to like find the universal themes of the things that we all experience and put them, but they're in like extreme circumstances. And so I think it's like, you all have a really hard time in that realm. So I give you some grace. give those authors a lot of grace.

Jenna G Judith (03:14)
Correct.

Cait (03:33)
⁓ man, sometimes you want to shake these characters. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (03:39)
in the realm of fantasy books, female main characters are put in more like pressure cooker situations where aspects of their personality and their character arc, they need to be very blatantly obvious. If there's subtlety...

Cait (03:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jenna G Judith (03:59)
it needs to be resolved at points. It needs to have callbacks later on in the story. And fantasy authors, yeah, we decide that because we dislike the rules so much that we need to control the rules and make our own worlds and everything, but with that comes a higher task, a larger task of...

Cait (04:07)
Hmm.

Jenna G Judith (04:24)
making these female main characters just not shitty. ⁓ but what I find in like contemporary romance there's no excuses and I still don't like them.

Cait (04:38)
But you are, but you're a girl's girl too. Like, wait, like I am really definitely a girl's girl. So I'm like, I want to really just love the girl that I'm reading and root for her at the same time, see her flaws. Like characters are like, people are flawed, but damn it. It's really hard sometimes unless they are super real. Like, I don't know how to say that. I think in fantasy a lot. And I love like when you said, because we hate following the rules.

Jenna G Judith (04:41)
That's true.

Yeah.

Cait (05:08)
You see that in these female main characters so much because they also hate following the rules and that seems to yeah, that seems to define their entire character a lot of the time though. They're just like the girl that hates the rules. Like I'm not, I'm not, a man can't tell me what to do. Like the amount of times that I've read, I don't know, I'm going to say it, but.

Jenna G Judith (05:15)
Isn't that funny?

Yeah, it does.

Cait (05:33)
And ACOTAR how many times is she like doing something where the guys come out and they're just like, why would you do that? I told you not to do that. She's like, I don't care. I just did it anyway. And you're like, that was a stupid choice that you made.

Jenna G Judith (05:45)
I love

you Sarah J Maas. Love you. But, ACOTAR maybe not the best female main character you've ever written. Throne of Glass, that's a different story. Because, you know, like she actually has a plan the entire time and she is thinking ahead. Not so much in ACOTAR.

Cait (06:10)
Ooh, I like that point. like you feel like that character more than just the motivation and their backstory about why they are maybe doing the things that they are, but there has to be an end goal destination for them because sometimes I'm just like, why are you doing that? Why you were told specifically not to do that for good reason, for very good reasons. Don't go there. And I feel like reasons were just never good enough for me.

Jenna G Judith (06:23)
Yes. Yes.

Like girl, you have no impulse control, like.

Cait (06:40)
Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I have full disclosure, I've only read the first one. And everyone tells me the second one is like, where are you?

Jenna G Judith (06:40)
Ugh.

Just had this conversation the other day. Same thing. like, you get past the first one. The first one is really just tip of the iceberg and the actual like meat is in the rest of the books. ⁓ Especially the novella one that you can see right there. The blue one, beep, right there. That one's the best one.

Cait (06:57)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

it. Okay. So you think the bit just going towards fantasy like that shit is that's really hard. You really have to focus on character and like introducing that character and everybody just having a real good picture of her.

Jenna G Judith (07:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I think the most successful female main characters in fantasy books are the ones that have agency and purpose. ⁓ So they...

make their own decisions, even if they're not good decisions, but they have a reason for it. It's not just like on a whim. And maybe that reason isn't divulged right away. That's kind of like the whole point of telling a story. But there are, there are a lot of books where I read these. I'm like, going back to your point, I'm like, why the hell did you make that choice? Like why? What prompted you to make such a

Cait (07:39)
All right.

Jenna G Judith (08:04)
bad choice, but also the ones where it's like how did you make that really excellent choice that all of a sudden worked out? Like it feels almost like a cop-out when you don't make your female main characters work for it a little bit. ⁓ where you just like hand them the world and be like here's the answer. But I don't know. I just, I have a really hard time with a woman that doesn't have intellect be her number one.

Cait (08:20)
Hmm.

Jenna G Judith (08:34)
tool. And that's why I'm writing my book the way I am. Of a woman not being given all of the information it doesn't feel realistic to me because

Women know they know all the things they seek it out They will like research the crap out of anything that they do not know so when someone doesn't have the did like a character doesn't have the desire or the fortitude to persevere and figure it out and like find the knowledge that they're missing I'm like that not realistic Like you you see the level I don't know about you Cait but

my levels of social media and internet stalking are like top tier. You give me like one notion of their name and maybe their ⁓ their profession and I can find out pretty much everything about them.

Cait (09:33)
Yeah, I can

back you up on that. You definitely do. I think and maybe we have just Western storytelling to blame this on, but I feel like authors are having to follow this hero's journey because that seems to be what sells or what they're looking for. And the hero's journey really does a disservice sometimes to your characters because a lot of

Jenna G Judith (09:38)
you

especially female

characters.

Cait (10:03)
especially

female characters, because I feel like the thing that women tend to use when writing women is that they just start out young and naive and then they end ⁓ enlightened. And I get it because I'm more or less doing that in mine too. But it's almost like just this like I'm starting out as like I don't know anything about the world and then I end and I know a little bit more and I'm more street smart.

And like, and it's like that's, and that is us just trying to write towards to the hero's journey. That's all that is.

Jenna G Judith (10:41)
You're so right.

You are so right. And I remember Vanessa Riley in Albuquerque when we went to that retreat. She said the same thing. She's like, the hero's journey is not meant for female main characters. It... Mm-hmm.

Cait (10:47)
Mm hmm. Love her.

It's really not. It's really hard. And that's what

I kept getting in my book because like, you know, like she, she's just a girl that hasn't really like traveled the world a lot. So she doesn't have like a lot of world experience, like cultural experience, but she's super smart. And she's, and I tried to just like get across that she's really good at her job. And she's very capable and talented at what she does. She just has this mindset that's just a little bit like inward.

and not outward and like she's just kind of a little bit closed off and people would be like, like readers would be like, they were like, well, why doesn't she want to travel the world? I'm like, well, like it's just not a reality for her. That's just a normal, that's a normal thing. Like there's a lot of women out there who can't afford to just go to Paris. So like it's not a part of their life or it's not how they were grow, grew up, like feeling comfortable doing that. And they're like, well, she has to have this like motivation that's sticking her to where she is and like

Jenna G Judith (11:38)
Yeah.

Right.

Cait (11:52)
this fear and like whatever it is and I'm like, no, she doesn't. She can just be like a normal woman who, who got stuck in her day to day and doesn't want to go anywhere. Like I think that's very relatable. I don't know why it has to be this like dramatic journey that like, it's like, why can't it just be a great story about a woman who finally gets to have some experiences and like learns how live in them and enjoy them and

Jenna G Judith (12:07)
No, I-

Cait (12:21)
and see different people and you know what I mean? And it's not like this like grand, I just want to read real women.

I think what I've come to believe is that I want to real women and I like when I get to read real women in like extraordinary circumstances.

Jenna G Judith (12:39)
Totally agree. And I want to be able to read women that are above the age of 19.

You

Cait (12:49)
really enjoying that. I think like, I didn't know that this is gonna sound so like, I didn't know I was gonna like that so much. But even like, I just read the correspondent, and she's like a 78 year old woman. And I'm like, it was one of the best books probably of the year, I think,

Jenna G Judith (13:00)
Yeah!

is a book that is specifically about like coming of age or developing your sense of purpose or your morals. Things that one does in their early 20s. Cool. But I am really tired of reading fantasy novels of those extraordinary circumstances and they're all really young. I'm like not cool because I was not a fully realized human at 18 or 19.

and I cannot relate to those characters as well. If it is a person that has gone through life and then gets like a tornado like launched at them and they have to deal with it, far more capable of doing so. And I think especially now readers want that more and more often. I look at

Cait (13:36)
Good.

Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (13:59)
the demographic of people that are reading, that are buying the books, that are engaging on social media and other platforms. And it's a lot of women from 30 to 45. So why don't we write more characters like that? Is it hard? I don't think so. But I would love to hear from more people if that is hard to write. Or is it this pressure that we have?

Cait (14:25)
Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (14:28)
from the current trends to write female main characters that are young. I don't know.

Cait (14:35)
It totally could be, and it could be very genre specific too, another kind of character that I'm seeing pop up a lot in like romance or romantic comedies ⁓ is the old favorite, ⁓ the manic pixie dream girl.

You know her, you love her. She started in like, I don't know, 2005, 2006, we started to see the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, like the 500 Days of Summer, the girl who's just not like the other girls, like she's quirky as fuck, she like eats pancakes for dinner and she dances in the rain and she listens to indie music you've never heard, it's gonna change your life. Garden State.

We start with Garden State, The Ultimate, just the Zooey Deschanel. Anybody that you're like, Zooey Deschanel could play this part is, but it is having a resurgence. And it is here again. And it is crazy, because at this point, I'm reading girls I'm just like, just get back in the car, get out of the rain.

Jenna G Judith (15:21)
Yes.

It's been done.

Cait (15:46)
get back in the car. Just go back to your, don't drag him out into the rain.

Jenna G Judith (15:50)
Unless you're...

No! I know! I'm so tired of it and I am probably gonna get like hate mail for this but I didn't actually like the movie The People We Meet On Vacation.

Cait (16:06)
I love Emily Henry. It's not my favorite because I do feel like she's a manic, nixie dream girl. And one of the books I just read, she's a pet turtle and she's really attached to it as a grown woman. I just can't relate to this. Is it like our stereotypes are like...

Jenna G Judith (16:27)
Like, do women have to be quirky in order to be interesting?

Cait (16:33)
Yeah, we are either strong and masculine and like we can do all the things that men do and it makes us so amazing or we are just manic pixie dream girls like just little fairies flitting around the earth looking for love in all the wrong places or

We are just, or we're like mice who are too scared of the world. It's like these like, I don't know if they're tropes. I don't know if I call them tropes, but they're just like the characters that are just not working for me. And it's showing me how hard it is to write a good female main character that people can identify with.

Jenna G Judith (17:18)
were writing your book, did you find yourself ever like falling into those tropes or was it or stereotypes was it very natural for you to have your female main character kind of carve a new path and have a different kind of voice than what was already out there?

Cait (17:35)
Hey, I mean, we're gonna find out. Like as soon as people start reading it, they're gonna be like, what is this bitch talking about? Her female main character is naive. And no, you know what? I think that what happens and when you fall into those traps is when you are trying to move the plot somewhere very specifically. if you get into that, and this is only my experience. I am not a professional in this, but.

Jenna G Judith (17:37)
Hahaha!

Cait (18:03)
It's like when you get to that point where it's like, my God, what's gonna happen next? I don't know, I'm at kind of a block. I think in your mind, you just turn to those things that we see on repeat that are feel familiar or like, instead of just diving deeper into the character and like, or diving deeper into the action or whatever it is that's gonna take you to like where you need to go, you're just kind of turning to the things that feel like safe and familiar.

Jenna G Judith (18:13)
familiar.

Ooh, ooh. Okay, do you remember when we were at the retreat Catherine Matthews, she was saying that her second book, her editor had told her multiple times, you have to dig deeper, you have to dig deeper. And it made her really uncomfortable. And she said, it made me so uncomfortable to the point where this is the best work I've ever written because it was

Cait (18:44)
Hmm

Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (18:55)
so much work to get deeper and deeper. And I think that is why we go towards the familiar or we end up going down these stereotypes or tropes or whatever the hell we want to call them. And we end up writing female main characters that are just lacking that dimension and lacking that depth because it really is almost like pseudo therapy. You have to do the work. You have to dig deep and

Cait (19:19)
Yes. Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (19:21)
It's yet another thing that I feel like as women, it's another expectation laid upon us. don't know if people like Stephen King or other male authors have to dig that deep with their character. Does that feel unnatural? Or...

are men coming across as authentic without having much depth upon them?

Cait (19:53)
that I mean I'm trying to think of a good example of like something written by a guy that I'm just like this really nails it I'm sure they're out there but

real women in real circumstances. So it's hard. Like, and I, that's why I talk so much about fantasy. Cause I'm like, I think that's where it's like the hardest is for you fantasy writers.

Jenna G Judith (20:12)
Mm-hmm.

Cait (20:13)
Maybe people can comment on this and just like, you are starting from scratch.

Jenna G Judith (20:18)
I wasn't for mine. I... okay.

Cait (20:20)
Okay.

Yeah, what's

been helping you or what's been the biggest challenge with that?

Jenna G Judith (20:26)
So because I so enjoyed all of the world building and I love diving deep into kind of the catalyst for this story of like the backstory. If I were to write a prequel, what would it be? Like you kind of have to form it all in your head. And it's really fun. I loved it.

Cait (20:41)
Mm-hmm. Great. That's crazy.

Jenna G Judith (20:49)
My main character, she was kind of the antithesis of what I had experienced in a lot of fantasy novels. She was well educated, she had a path for herself, she was not by any means helpless, But then I crafted a world where a woman

wasn't doing herself a disservice by being intelligent. Like women were created very much on the equal playing field of men. And it I love my book so much. And I really wish it was done so I could like share it with people because I love these characters so much. They're just the best. ⁓ But she

Cait (21:29)
That's the best.

Jenna G Judith (21:30)
But she is like, she has tenacity. She has gumption and she has a very distinct voice. And all of those traits I took from women that I admire in real life. I'm like, what if all of these things that I'm observing, and you know, some of them come from myself as well, not God, not majority of them at all.

Cait (21:47)
Thank

Jenna G Judith (21:56)
That would be not a fun story. But it'd be very chaotic and just all over the place and it would make zero sense to anyone. You would need an appendix. I just took all those super strong qualities. I put them into one character and then I kind of just, I am a plotter, but I let her kind of dictate where she wanted to go in the plot.

And it was so fun because I had a... I didn't come up with the ending until I was coming up on the ending. Like I didn't know how it was going to end. I didn't know how she was going to react. And it was almost like...

Cait (22:33)
Thank

Jenna G Judith (22:36)
watching it unfold and I remember writing that ending and figuring it all out and be like this is how it ends this is the whodunit and this is the arc that she takes I'm like this is freaking brilliant and Cody was very disturbed he's like what just happened are you okay oh it was so good but

Cait (22:47)
Thank

Highs are high.

Jenna G Judith (22:57)
the the circumstances that she was under yes 100 % were made up and yes they were like very extreme circumstances but she's a real person like she is very like she has flaws she makes decisions she has agency she really is the girl's girl

Cait (23:09)
Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (23:19)
Like if you met her you would be absolutely terrified of her but you would also be like you are you are the Beyonce of this realm of where we're hanging out like who runs the world you do right there. And that was one of the songs that was on my playlist was there's a fair bit of

Cait (23:22)
Yeah, I wanna be heard.

I love this conversation about female main characters because this isn't like us hating or like there are so many out there to love it's just I love that women's fiction is having its moment right now and we're enjoying reading them so much and it's like the experience of the writer though

Jenna G Judith (23:55)
So many.

There's so many characters.

Yeah, I love that we even can have this conversation. have so many amazing female main characters to choose from and to discuss. The good, the bad, and the otherwise. And I don't think we would have been able to 10 years ago.

Cait (24:13)
now.

No, I think we'd still be seeing a lot of dudes writing female main characters and you know what? Maybe that's where all of these stereotypes and these things come from that we're so used to seeing pop up so much is maybe from the dudes. I mean look at our first favorite female main character that I just feel like like Bridget Jones and look at how far we've come even from

Jenna G Judith (24:32)
Yeah.

Cait (24:48)
from then and ⁓ yeah, I don't know. Was Mary Tyler Moore the first one? We actually all got to see a real woman portrayed as working and trying to do it all. But for me, it was Bridget Jones where it was just like, I'm obsessed with this woman. Yeah. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (25:07)
Yes, yeah, she's quirky,

but she's so authentic. Like, you know who that is. And you-

Cait (25:14)
And she's so flawed

but not in a way that makes unlikable, just relatable.

Jenna G Judith (25:20)
Mm-hmm. Like she wasn't flawed because she was broken. She was flawed because she's a person.

Cait (25:24)
⁓

And it's really hard to write flaws when you are talking like I I definitely struggled with that a little bit because I think I was just writing so personally about stuff that I was just writing myself and I was like My character gets cheated on it's not a big surprise that happens right away but like you have to see why he would cheat on her at some point you have to you have to just be like

Like why did this happen to her? He's not just a douchebag. He's unlikable, but he's not just an asshole. there has to be, there's a reason like he wasn't fulfilled in this relationship with her. There's something that she's not able to provide for him that, you know, would kind of also contribute to. Well, you have to write flaws as well as making them, I mean, it's hard. It is very hard.

Jenna G Judith (26:10)
It is hard.

But isn't it kind of like a puzzle when you figure it out?

Cait (26:16)
Yeah,

Jenna G Judith (26:16)
And you can't just write you unless it's an autobiography. Because, yes, I saw some posts. I forgot which day it was. ⁓

Cait (26:22)
I'm done.

Jenna G Judith (26:31)
who it was or whatever. But it was essentially if you wrote yourself as the main character verbatim it's going to be very boring because we are normal people but we need some pizzazz. We need some like polish or we need a little like scuffing up like something just to add the layer and make it enticing to so many more different types of audiences.

Cait (26:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

they're in there, you need to show that it's gonna sound like so cliche, but the depth doesn't come easily. It just doesn't. And I think it was Crystal on one of the episodes where she said that she was told to write letters from her character. And I feel like normally if anybody told me that, I'd be like, oh my God. No, But

there is something to just doing whatever you can to unlock that chamber in your brain that has the ideas, that has the depth, that has the story, that has the digging deeper part. Like, how do you dig deeper? You have to do all of these extra things.

Jenna G Judith (27:42)
Yeah, and they're not writing your book. It's either writing exercises, it's usually using visuals, it's making a Pinterest board or a playlist or something that the creative brain is such an interesting place and I've been in touch with my creative brain for a very long time. Thank you college.

Cait (27:48)
Bye.

Mm-hmm.

It lives there somewhere.

Jenna G Judith (28:11)
you have to experience something from not the point of view of writing. If that is your end result. For example, I had a professor in college. It was my sculpture professor and

Cait (28:20)
That's a good to say it. Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (28:27)
he told everyone you cannot look at art as inspiration for your next sculpture or for your next project. You can't look at art. Do not look at artists. Don't go to the like art section in the library, but you physically need to go to the library and you need to go look at books and you need to have some reference point that you can cite and it can't be artwork.

and you know a lot of people ⁓ toyed with the idea of like architecture and he's like it's a little gray area but sure if it gets the point across why not and I went in totally like I'm like this is shit I don't want to do this like I want my sculpture to look like this like I had the end result already figured out in my head I didn't have a reason for it.

But I'm like, I will listen to you fine. Because I follow most of the rules. So I went to the biology section, like the plant biology specifically, and I started looking at books and I found some of the most gorgeous renderings of seed pods.

Cait (29:23)
Mm.

you

Jenna G Judith (29:43)
And it was so cool. And then I found another book about defenses ⁓ that plants have against like predators or against animals. And I combined the two and I made a really awesome sculpture and it was beautiful. I loved it. But I wouldn't have arrived there ever if I hadn't done that pre work of not referencing something that had already been created. So I needed to go through the process.

Cait (30:10)
mhm

Jenna G Judith (30:13)
of discovering the why, discovering the purpose and really like that depth and the meat of what I was actually doing. And then the form kind of just came and so many people they write books because they want to

entertain or they want to reach a certain demographic or they want to have a happy ending or they want to have a character that overcomes this major obstacle like divorce or a death in the family but what if you just came up with your inspiration first and not your end result first? I think you would a lot of people would have have greater success

Cait (30:55)
Mm-hmm.

Jenna G Judith (30:59)
and maybe even less strenuous ⁓ creative process use.

Cait (31:07)
that's such a great way to say it because yeah, I think, I think that we're, a lot of the times we're told to like start with your one sentence pitch or start with this. And then I feel like then I'm just writing for the market. Yeah, to that, which we can do a whole episode on just writing for the market. And if the market is selling the manic picture dream girl, then I'm sure a lot of us are just gonna write the quirkiest, quirky.

Jenna G Judith (31:21)
to that. Yes!

Yes.

Cait (31:38)
girl that still sleeps with her stuffed animals, girl. ⁓ Which is fine if that's what everybody wants to read. But at some point, there has to be the why of like, yeah, of what you're creating.

Jenna G Judith (31:53)
I don't think I want to write to the market.

Cait (31:59)
That's a bold statement.

Jenna G Judith (32:01)
I know and it kind of hurt me saying it but I don't think I want to.

Cait (32:04)
Say it out loud. I have notes.

And I have made the courageous decision.

Jenna G Judith (32:11)
you

This is my press release.

Cait (32:14)
I have notes.

But it feels like that. You don't have to. Like, nobody's saying that you have to.

Jenna G Judith (32:18)
It does!

No! And I don't want to write the next Akitar or I don't want to write the next Throne of Glass or Fourth Wing or whatever. I want to write what I, I want to write my story and that's also why I think I'm going to indie publish at the end of the day. Like I don't want someone to say that won't sell because I'm not, if your goal

Cait (32:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jenna G Judith (32:50)
is to sell as many books as you can, that's your goal and you will do what you need to achieve that goal. That's not going to be my goal. Nope. My goal is to tell this really unique story that I made up and I want some people to read it. I don't have a goal in mind but I want it out there and I want it to be what I want it to be. I want to have that control because

Cait (33:17)
Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (33:20)
Little real life talk. As a mom of two who has a job and has a husband and a house and all of these things, there's not much in my life that I have actual control over. You try reasoning with a two year old that I call my Sour Patch Kid. You cannot. I have no, I am reacting maybe 70 % of the day to the circumstances that are in front of me because I need...

Cait (33:32)
Hmm.

Absolutely.

Jenna G Judith (33:51)
And...

Cait (33:51)
Right,

like I just feel like sometimes I feel like the day is happening to me. And I'm like.

Jenna G Judith (33:56)
Yes. Yes!

Yeah, so this

Cait (33:59)
I'm not tackling

it.

really raining in the day. The day is just coming at me.

Jenna G Judith (34:04)
No, Yep, and

I'm doing what I can within that 24 hour period. And if it is taking a nap because I am actually exhausted, cool.

my goal is to really just, I can't have any. I just want to go through life. Sure. I want to publish my book this year, but I'm just going to go through life. I'm going to let it come at me and not freak out about it. That's my goal.

of not getting completely swamped and overwhelmed by the lack of control I have in the day. Okay, thanks, bye. That's my TED Talk. ⁓

Cait (34:44)
See,

I'm fine reading that woman.

Jenna G Judith (34:47)
Hahaha!

Cait (34:48)
I need more women like that.

Jenna G Judith (34:52)
Yes,

me too. Me too.

Cait (34:55)
and see how they...

Jenna G Judith (34:57)
I have to make one of my contemporary romances about that because I need more of those.

my gosh, cheers to the girls.

Cait (35:05)
Cheers to the girls.

We love reading the girls. We love reading the girls. Keep the girls coming.

Just.

Make some more moms too in these romance. Like I'm enjoying the romance, just telling you too, but I'm like, I need a mom with some kids who like doesn't have a lot of time to date. It's okay.

I just can't wait to read the next female main character that I'm really excited about. And I'm like, yes, this is really nailing it. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (35:33)
And if

you have one either that you made or that your friend made or that you just read, please share it. Because I want, I just want like a stack of books about women that at the end of the day, I'm like, that was wonderful. That like floored me with how much I was rooting for her. And

To quote the ever powerful, the ever famous Tyra Banks, we were rooting for you. We were all rooting for you.

Cait (36:11)
We're all rooting for you.