Rachael Herron's Blog, page 10

Willie and Waylon

We are moving to New Zealand! It’s been a lifelong dream to go, and we can’t pass it up (I’m a citizen, and Lala’s visa came through!)

The hardest part for us, after leaving our loved ones, is the animals. 

We couldn’t bring Clementine with us as she was at the end of her life, and we wouldn’t leave until she did. Then she left.

Dozy is young and strong, and will be living with her friend Sophie until we settle down and can send for her. 

But our darling brother-cats Waylon and Willie—they’re simply too old (14) to safely make the trip and the quarantine. Too many websites have scared us with stories of people’s older cats dying in transit. 

So we need to find them a good home. No, a great home, because these are great boys. 

May I tell you about them? 

We adopted them way back when Digit died. I mourned for a few months, and I was just so sad. I went to the shelter to look for a cat to adopt in his honor, and came home with two wee boys. 

The first pic of them, still in the shelter. Waylon in front, Willie in back.

Then Digit came back from the dead, and oh my god, he was pissed. 

you gotta be fuckin kidding me with this

Waylon and Willie are truly the best cats. (You know I don’t lie about this stuff. Digit was the worst cat, and I told everyone, even though he had my whole heart.) 

Typical.

They’re brothers, and from them, we learned that adopting siblings is totally the way to go. They love each other. They’re constantly cuddled around each other. (Waylon also loved cuddling Clementine, but he only seemed to grieve for a couple of days because he has Willie.) 

You know how cats are often neurotic about being petted constantly? They’re not. They love being cuddled by humans, don’t get me wrong. But they don’t need it all the time, because they have each other, I think. 

Willie is long-haired, but not sheddy. (I’m allergic to cats and I’m good with both of them as long as I don’t pet one of them and then rub my eyes.)

Willie says hello! He’d like to help!

Waylon is short-haired and sleek. 

Waylon sneaking a cuddle with Dozy who’s just not into it.

PROS AND CONS

Here are the pros of these kitties! Listing them first because they vastly outweigh the cons. 

They are soooo loving. 

Taken just a few minutes ago, when I went to find them.

Waylon loves to be held on his back like a baby. He will, in fact, stay that way for an hour if you’d like to hold him that long, especially if you squish his head. 

Upside down bliss

He is an excellent migraine kitty. He totally ignores my head unless I have one (or am getting one – he predicts them before I can.)

Migraine support cat

They love a romp! They’ll run up and down the house, chasing each other like they’re kittens.

They are both purr-buckets with quiet but very enthusiastic motors. 

They’re chatty, and always have something cheerful to say about the weather or the excellent way you’re dressed. 

They love their litter box (a very fancy Litter Robot 3 which will go with them!) and rarely miss. SELF-CLEANING LITTER BOX that actually works! It tells your phone when it’s ready to have the bag changed. No scooping at all!

Here’s Waylon hugging Lala’s leg. Yes, he looks a little shabby. Ever since he was young, he’s always had a weird thing where his fur kind of just…rubs off? Both kits are a little ratty, both of them Velveteen kitties, so well loved and so loving.

Speaking of that, they love everyone, especially all people. And all dogs. And all the other cats they’ve lived with (Digit and Adah.) For this reason, they do have to be indoor cats. They’ve never been outside, and their number one thing to do in front of a dog is to lie down and prepare to cuddle, so they shouldn’t be allowed to roam the streets or anyone else’s backyards, where they would definitely try to cuddle with strange dogs, for sure. 

They love each other most of all. Sometimes to the point of humping each other. Ahem. That’s a little weird. 

Speaking of weird, here are the cons: 

Waylon is often wailin’. He wasn’t named for that, but I believe it’s Lala’s fault for naming him that. He just likes to walk around the house and cry for fun. He always has. Willie is also vocal but less loud. They sound like Siamese.

Every six months or so, one of them (we think it’s Waylon but he’s never been caught) will pee somewhere weird, like the middle of the kitchen floor. But neither of them ever learned to spray, thank god! So it’s just pee and easily cleaned up. And strangely, not smelly? I can’t explain that but it’s nice.

Biggest con: They’re old. So they will get sick and eventually die. THAT’S A BIG CON. However, they’ve been very healthy kitties. Willie has had issues with his kidneys in the past (about 2 years ago) and has some elevated kidney levels right now, and an ultrasound coming up next week. Other than that, nothing else has gone wrong with them. Willie yaks up a hairball or two or vomits at least once a day, always on the floor. If you’ve got a dog or two, this won’t be a problem. (I’m kidding! But I honestly did always wonder why he only horked up hairballs when we were home. Then I realized, with quarantine, that the reason we always came home to clean floors wasn’t that they were waiting to do it till we got home. ) 

That’s it! 

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about Willie’s supernatural ability to tell when you’re about to eat ice cream. It’s handy, really. (What if you forgot? He cares about your needs.) He races to the kitchen to watch you open the freezer and then will sit on the back of the couch as you eat, tapping your shoulder as if to say, Good job! Have some more, friend! Sometimes he’ll slip to your lap to lick the condensation on the outside of the carton, and then he slinks away, proud of himself for getting away with it. Sucker.

We fucking love these cats. It’s breaking our hearts to leave them. 

That’s why we’re starting early to re-home them. We won’t be leaving till the end of summer, but when our house is emptying and being painted, etc, it might be better to let them go earlier rather than later. Not sure on a date to let them go just yet, though. (Oh, god, I’m crying just typing this. They’ve been with us since they were just earrings!) 

Note: We’d love their adopter to be somewhat local to NorCal. You can come get them in the car, but no airplanes, please. We’re trying to spare them that stress.

PLEASE SHARE THIS, preferably with your favorite cat lady or gent, the one who really gets it.

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Clementine and Meditation

Written on December 5th, 2020

It is, after all, 
a command she understands. 
Sit. 
So we do. 
Stay is harder. 
Rest in the breath is only as good 
as your hammock mind allows,
and currently the swing is occupied by:
ten undone monkeys,
a small, cheerful rat,
an elephant wearing a magician’s cape,
and one very nervous jackalope. 

She doesn’t mind the interlopers, though. 
Age has mellowed her prey drive,
and now she nods to squirrels affably.
It’s dulled her hearing, 
and now she enjoys a 
good fireworks show as much as I do.
Her sense of smell is still acute,
So acute it’s asnorable.

But I don’t baby talk at her 
from my cushion
(for once).

Instead, I put on a serious show.
Eyes closed spine straight hands still legs crossed,
ignoring the hammock menagerie
as they perform circus dives into cups of water
and hoot rudely at the crows overhead.  

What I can’t ignore is her: 
Next to me, she sits better than I do.
But then: 
a jostle, 
a shove that would be rude on the train, 
her head juts under my elbow and
without my permission, she’s in my embrace. 

The sign in my mindsky flashes in neon green: 
DO NOT PET DOG WHILE MEDITATING.

But with a wrist-twist, 
I touch her chest, 
and under my fingers, 
the feel of her rough silk 
becomes my prayer. 
She won’t be here long. 
Nor will I.
Stay.
We try. 

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What We Knew About Clementine

She picked Lala. Thirteen years ago, we went to the pound to look at another dog, but the one in the cage next to that one just looked at Lala and asked to be met. In the meeting area, she leaned on Lala, and Lala leaned back against her and that was it.

with a wee Miss Idaho, too

She liked two things – everyone, and all food. She wasn’t crazy about other dogs, but if you were a human, and especially if you were a human who knew how to carry food in your hands, she was your best friend.

She was the cuddliest dog I’ve ever met. The perfect little spoon. Her snores were so cute that we called it “snorebuggling.”

Once, a man we didn’t know came over to buy a couch we’d listed on Craigslist. He came in the house, sat on the soft, and Clementine raced in from another room, launching herself at him. She tucked herself against him and almost snuggled him to death. That’s how she was for STRANGERS. Imagine what we got from her. Every day.

She enjoyed hammocking with me.

Sun – all day. She soaked it in. (And look at those earssss!)

She was a pocket pitty, thirty-five pounds of love. We always said she looked like a beagle wearing a pit-bull costume.

YOU ARE TOUCHING ME OMG OMG OMG

She was a goofball.

The only picture I’ve ever painted was of her for Lala for Christmas, sitting with the jasmine vine tangled around her neck. She’d constantly get stuck there and then just wait patiently for us to cut her out.

She had her very own cat, Waylon.

Clemmy’s been in hospice for about 6 or 8 months, and had graduated OUT of it twice! (Seriously, Pet Hospice has been the greatest thing to ever happen for our confidence that we were doing it all right, as we trudged this difficult time.)

And hey! We’ve been cooking her food for her morning and night for a year (pancreatitis and kidney disease). SHE LOVED THAT.

And we’ve been home for a solid year! YAY PANDEMIC! Always with her, ready for a cuddle! SHE LOVED THAT, TOO.

And today, when hospice came to help her on her way, her cat helped, too. Waylon was with her until the very end right along with us, and kept his paw on her as she died.

Our hearts are broken. Thanks for loving her, too.

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The Muse Isn’t Who You Think She Is

You’re already ready. That’s my battle cry and my deepest truth. There’s nothing you aren’t ready to make, to learn, to do, or to become. 

But you may have already noticed that doesn’t make it easy. 

Just being ready to do the Big Scary Thing you want to do isn’t a cure-all. Simply being ready doesn’t make you leap up in the morning to work hard to chase your dream. 

And that sucks! I know. 

Often, artists (like you, like me) wait for the inspiration to follow their dreams. They wait for the Muse to take them by the hand and lead them to the magic. They wait for the moment that conditions are just perfect for making their art. Or they believe that they just have to find the exact right process that works for them, the process that will finally allow them to work more regularly on their art. 

And they think that if they just do the work more often, it’ll get easier to do it. 

But—sadly—doing the work of our heart never becomes easy. Ever. 

One of the biggest joys of my life is working with new writers who want to write or revise their books. Most of them enter my ninety-day classes expecting to find out that once they’re on track and working regularly, things will smooth out. The thing they’ve been missing, they think, is commitment to the project. I can help with that—they get external accountability, which is incredibly helpful, yes. They make a concrete plan of action (which is changeable, just like life), and yes, that’s also awesome. 

But then, a few weeks in, they all start to realize something at the same time: Oh, damn, this is still really hard!

Dude, that’s a real downer of a realization. 

Making the commitment and showing up to do the work—isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t they be rewarded with pleasure and ease? 

I understand the pain they feel of crashing into this question because I’m a forgetter. I forget the things I’ve learned over and over, and I ask when my art is going to get easier all the time. 

The more books I write, the more I expect the Muse to show up. I like to believe that someday she’ll wake me with a gentle kiss on my cheek. Then she’ll make me a perfect cup of coffee and guide me to the desk, where she’ll not only open my document, but also inspire me to write sentences and paragraphs and scenes and chapters and whole books quickly and easily because she’s chosen me. I have committed to the process, and therefore, I will finally be the Muse’s teacher’s pet.

Hell, no. It just doesn’t work that way. 

You already know that, don’t you? You can feel that in your bones. You’ve been waiting for the heat of the Divine Muse, but you’re really pretty chilly most of the time. 

The Muse is often ascribed fire-like properties. She burns. Shakespeare said, “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend/The brightest heaven of invention.” When caught in her arms, you’ll burn, too, all the passion in your body and heart bursting into a creative blaze. 

And okay, a small part of this is true. The Muse does require warmth. She hates the cold, and she’ll definitely go on strike if the temperature drops below sixty-five. 

So that makes you, the artist, like Laura Ingalls Wilder when she woke to find that “ice crackled on the quilt where leaking rain had fallen” in The Long Winter. Every single damn day, you wake up under the covers, clutching the little warmth that’s left. Shivering helps a bit as it rapidly contracts your skeletal muscles, generating just enough heat to stay alive. 

But you have to relight the fire, and no amount of shivering will do it. Praying for the Muse to come in with a blowtorch might be a fun wish but she doesn’t work that way. 

So every day that you’ve scheduled to work on the thing that holds your heart, whatever that is, you have to pry yourself out of the covers and throw on every sweater and jacket you own while you screech like someone’s just thrown you into a Norwegian fjord. 

Then, you bolt for the wood-fired stove. You pray there’s still a tiny spark left under the log from last night that’ll help the newspaper catch faster, but if it’s been more than a day since you worked on your project, the stove is as cold as your fingertips, and you’ve got to work to get that sumbitch warm.  

So you shove in the paper, spitting curses that would make Gordon Ramsey blush. A little kindling next, but you move too fast, and a splinter shoves its way into your palm so far that you feel it pierce your spleen. Then you reach to add a nice, small piece of dry wood, except, goddammit, it’s been raining, and you forgot to bring any small pieces in yesterday to dry so you’re going to have to use even more kindling to catch a bigger, drier log, and meanwhile, your frigid bones sound like a pair of maracas being shaken by a giant. 

Slowly—oh, so slowly—the first log starts to catch. 

Even more slowly, the heat stops going up the flue and starts pushing out into the room, into you. First your face warms, probably more from exertion, but you’ll take it. Then your teeth stop clacking. You’re able to stand and turn your backside to the growing warmth. 

Then, finally, you’re warm. You can move again. You can do the work you wanted to do. Your hands are warm enough to hold the paintbrush, or your fingers can hold the pen you’re using to write your poem. 

In fact—and here’s the magic of this—as you do your work, you just keep getting warmer. 

While you’re working, ideas start to flow as easy as tossing another log on the fire to keep the heat going. You realize your book needs a dragon—why hadn’t you seen that before? It’s so obvious! You’ve been struggling to figure out how to up the stakes and to show how foes become friends—this is genius. 

You turn to thank the Muse who’s just given you this incredible idea, but you can’t see her. 

Huh. 

Weird. 

Kind of like you can’t see your own face when you turn around. 

Hi, guess what—YOU ARE THE MUSE. 

The Muse as an outside force that comes to help spark your inspiration doesn’t exist. 

We think we have to wait for the right mood to do our creative work. We think we have to wait for inspiration to strike before we pour our hearts into what we love. And sure, that sometimes works. For me, it averages out to about two days a year. Twice a year, I launch myself at my desk with joy, just because I feel like it. All the other days? Inspiration and joy wells up only when I’m actually doing the generation of the heat myself. 

Madeline L’Engle said, “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.” She knew that she was the Muse, and that showed in her books—her characters always found the answers inside themselves (because that’s where answers always live). 

You have to work your way to inspiration, not the other way around. 

And work it is. Would I rather lie in bed every morning than getting up and relighting the fire? Hell, yes. From bed, I can reach for my phone and tumble into the heffalump trap that is the constant cycle of refreshing email, then Twitter, then Instagram, and then back around again. Our brains—used to getting pings on our phones or our computers every few minutes—crave that dopamine hit that comes with novelty. Each time you refresh an app, there’s a deep down hope that this time will be the time that satisfies the urge. You already know that never happens but you do it anyway. (Don’t feel bad! You’re not at fault for falling into a trap that was set precisely for you. You’re human. The first step to getting out of the trap is realizing you’ve been caught.)

Okay. You’ve set the phone down. You’re wishing like hell to find the inspiration to write one more scene, or work on the dance move that’s been literally tripping you up for weeks. But you, the Muse, are shivering. 

In order to warm up, in order to feel creative, you have to do something creative. 

Honestly, watching my students realize that writing their books will never feel easy but that they can light their own Muse’s fire is something that never gets old for me to witness. 

It’s not going to get easier, is it? 

No, I say. 

But every time I do write, I find inspiration. From the work itself. 

Yes, I say. 

Even on the hardest days, doing the work feels better than not doing the work. 

Exactly, I say. 

And it’s really not going to get easier? 

It doesn’t get easier, I say. But it keeps getting better. 

So: light the fire. Yes, it’s hard, but the more fuel you give it, the brighter it will blaze. As you work, the inspiration will come, in a slow trickle at first but the more you go back to it, the hotter it grows. 

You are the Muse. And how I love to see you burn. 

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How to Make Art by Using Lists

I realized last night that I’d gotten all caught up in thinking that each post here at You’re Already Ready should be deep and life-changing. And of course, that led to thinking I needed these to be well-written and lyrical. 

Now, you already know this about me. I can write well, and I can write lyrically. 

But mostly, I’m a sturdy writer, and proud of it. 

Sturdiness is great, in both mind and body. I have short legs. In fact, just this morning I stood naked at the kitchen sink, downing that first gorgeous glass of cold water, and my wife exclaimed, “Just look at those short legs!” I tried to be mad at her, but it’s hard to be mad at a simple fact. 

I’m compact. I’m built like I was made to pick potatoes, or berries. My center of gravity is low, and I’m just as comfortable squatting as standing. My body, when it’s working well, is serviceable. It’s functional and durable.

My prose is serviceable, too. It serves a function—it speaks to you. With it, I talk with you. 

I don’t ever want to get on a soap box and wobble out platitudes made of snake oil, words that do nothing but sound like the current trendy thing to say. 

Nope. 

So I’ll tell you a few things that are really, deeply true right now. 

1. Joy hums like bees inside me sometimes. I’m feeling it right now. Slightly dangerous, but capable of making such sweetness. 

2. I can’t live without peanut butter and bananas. Especially when both of these are spread on toasted sourdough. 

3. I’m drinking more coffee lately because someone said I should (I can’t remember who, but it was specifically a health thing) and thank you, Baby Jeebus, because every few years I abandon coffee for other health reasons, and it’s always, always a mistake. 

4. Kamala Harris was sworn in on the morning I started writing this (it sometimes takes me a while to post), and I didn’t see it happen because I was sitting on the couch in my office, trying to figure out what I was feeling, and why it hurt. This had nothing to do with my body, and everything with my heart. 

5. So I wrote a poem in those moments. Here it is. 

For four years,
Hope has been wedged 
between old suitcases
and the box of holiday decorations
we didn’t even bother to 
pull down last year. 
I’m shut like a forgotten tomb.
I’ve forgotten where hope fits.

But she is the key to the rusted lock.
(It hurts to feel the pins move.
Slowly, so slowly,
my soul’s rheumatic lament.) 

Then she starts to sing, and I realize:
I still know every word by heart.

6. Then I went back on the livestream and watched Biden’s speech and heard Amanda Gorman’s poetry and remembered that, yes, art is how we recover. 

6.5 I’ve sold more books in the three weeks of the Biden/Harris term than I have in a very long time. I’m not the only person with more space in their heads for joy and art and books and peanut butter. 

7. Making art is hope made visible. 

8. I finished a terrible first draft of a funny, sweet book on Friday. It’s neither funny nor sweet yet. It’s not even a book. It’s a collection of phrases lying on my office floor twitching their tails hopefully. I’ve promised each one they’ll be in the final version someday, but I know I’m lying to some of them. Please don’t tell them—they’re all so earnest. 

9. Lists, when done right, can also be art. 

10. I am so lucky that I can write this while in bed. My window is open, and I can hear a goldfinch chirping and above it flies the Oakland bird of all seasons, the ever-present black helicopter. 

11. I got tired after getting to number 10, and took a nap, because resting was my One Job at that moment, and I’m only finishing this list a couple of weeks later. Which is also okay. Lists can hold literally anything, hopes and fears, what you need to get at the store, who you’ll be when you grow up, and the reminder to get a smog check which is a bullet journal item that slips from list to list, still undone week after week. 

12. I really need to get that smog check. Doesn’t it seem kind of silly to need a smog check for a SmartCar? I mean, I think our air popper is less green than my car is. 

13. Do people still skip the thirteenth floor when labeling stories in a building? This always seemed rather magical that they were allowed to do it—the thirteenth floor just IS, no matter what you call it. Does pretending it’s not there really make a difference? 

14. I’ve always thought that the number thirteen and black cats are lucky. A black cat crossing your path is really lucky. But my mother always said that a black cat who starts to cross your path and then changes its mind—that’s unlucky. I think mostly because you have a much greater chance of hitting it if it doubles back, right? 

15. Once, when I worked 911, my medics couldn’t find a house where someone was having an asthma attack because the residents had decided their house number wasn’t auspicious and just changed it by simply painting a new number on their house and alerting no one in the city. Everything worked out okay, so I guess they were right to do it. 

16. This. This is what I needed to shake me out of the feeling that You’re Already Ready has to be “good.” It doesn’t. It has to be done, that’s all. What I’m meaning to do is catch moments and string them together, that’s all. Each moment that I hang up is a tiny light, and when they’re all turned on, my soul glows like a million fireflies. 

17. Your soul, too, has the same tendency to glow and brighten the space around you. Why not let that shine today in some very small (or very big) way. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect or good. It just has to exist, and only you can make that happen. Use a list, or use a song, or dance your way across the kitchen floor. You’re worthy of hanging those lights for yourself, and you never know exactly what you’ll illuminate. 

The lists within me honor the lists within you, my sweet friend. Now, glow. 

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How to Rest When You’re a Workaholic

LISTEN HERE:

I’m propped in bed, with my new bed desk over my lap. It’s a wonderful piece of equipment, and I’ve got my laptop propped up on it using a stand I normally use at my office desk. That brings the computer up to eye-level, and my separate keyboard and mouse are lower. It feels ergonomically comfy. 

Calm jazz workflow—well, that’s what Spotify calls it—is tinkling out of the computer’s speakers. I’m burning a Falling Leaves candle that smells like vanilla and burnt sugar and maybe old books (and nothing at all like falling leaves).

The BedJet is running, as it always is when I’m in bed, which has been a lot of the time lately as I struggle to recover from whatever this ailment is that I have. It’s still as-yet to be diagnosed, more than six weeks into My Agonies. (I like to practice for being ninety.)

Oh, what’s a BedJet? I swear I’m not going to go all Facebook Ad on you, but wow, do I love this thing (and that link’ll get you 10% off). Basically, it blows air into a special sheet at the exact temperature you want. A bit chilly? Turn up the heat. Suddenly too hot? Blow cool air all over your body. It was much too expensive and it’s one of my favorite things in the whole world. The very first thing I did when we decided to move to New Zealand, even before looking into a visa for my wife, was to email BedJet and ask if we could use it on NZ voltage. The answer was yes, thank God.  

So yeah, I’m pretty cozy in bed right now. 

And what I’m really doing isn’t writing out these words or drinking the coffee at my right hand (though I am technically doing those things.) 

What I’m trying to do is remember that resting is my One Job right now. 

I’m a workaholic, no doubt about it. If I like to do anything, I like to do it in excess, and I love my job. 

It turns out that I’m the same workaholic I’ve been since I was a twelve-year-old in summer, trying to figure out how to fit in time to climb trees while still having enough daylight hours to start a new small business like making bumper stickers or selling macrame plant hangers on commission at the local nursery. 

A couple of years ago I was reading through my journals, and I found this sentence, written at age seventeen: “I’ve been so busy with work, I haven’t had any time to relax.”

It’s actually a little reassuring to know I’ve always been like this. 

People don’t really change very much. 

I mean, I change all the time, constantly refining my processes, fiddling with how I do things. I change in a myriad small ways, yes. 

But those are on the surface. 

At base, at my core, I’m still the Rachael I was at five, worried that I would get a question wrong and lose the undying love of my kindergarten teacher. Working, and doing things right, was how I felt worthy, even then. 

So you know what? I figure I’m never going to change on this front. 

And instead of fighting my true nature, I’ve been tricking it. 

We all know that multitasking is a myth and that it actually wastes time, rather than saving it. 

With that in mind, I’ve been choosing to think that at any given moment, I only have One Job. 

One job. 

Not a list. (I do have a list—of course a person like me has lists of her lists—but I try to forget that.) 

At any given second, I ask myself, what’s my one job, right now? 

Then I hurl myself into it, like the excellent worker bee I am. 

Luckily, I have some training in single-tasking. When I’m well, my daily goal as a full-time writer is to write or revise for three to four hours a day. Everything else (email, teaching, podcasting) must fit around that. 

And when I’m writing, I’m just writing. The internet is turned off. If I need to research something, I make a note to look it up later—even one glance at the internet is enough to suddenly interest me in buying a new notebook or a light-up mood ring. My phone is set to silent and turned face-down so I can’t even see it brighten if a text lands. When I’m writing, I’m only doing one thing, and that thing is writing. 

Now? I’m using that single-mindedness for everything else, too. When I’m doing admin work, I’m not checking Twitter. When I’m podcasting, I don’t check email. 

And when it’s my one job to rest, I rest. 

I give up the fight, and I lay down my weapons. That little voice in my head shouts, “Slacker!” and instead of flinching, simply say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’s like answering the door to a religious zealot. There’s no point in arguing with a person pressing a heaven-sent pamphlet on you. 

When I slam the door on the rude, Puritanical voice that lives rent-free in my head, I don’t think about it anymore. The fact that it has to trudge back to its car in the rain carrying unwanted fliers isn’t really my problem. 

I’ve already defined my one job, and it’s up to me to get it right. 

Oh, a challenge? Yes, please! Watch me rest better than anyone else! BOOM! ADMIRE MY RESTING FACE – IS IT NOT RESTFUL? 

Brains and bodies need real rest, y’all. Yours included. 

When we’re resting and not thinking too hard, our brain’s default mode network (DMN) switches on, and does some cleanup, making connections and solving problems in a looser, freer way than when we’re focused on thinking. 

How do you make sure your DMN gets time to light up and perform this magic? Some people walk, others take long showers or do the dishes by hand. Some people take long drives, other clean out the hamster cage.

Me? 

I watch Real Housewives and no, I’m not ashamed of it (much). 

Reality shows with contests? Too stressful. But women just gossiping about other women while wearing makeup that defies belief? My brain doesn’t have to do a lick of heaving lifting. I can let their admittedly mostly-vapid words roll around in my head while in the background my default mode network is cleaning up what I left behind on the page. 

And I treat watching those women’s earrings bobble above their pendulous, expensive breasts like it’s my job, because right now, rest is my job. 

In the past, I’ve run into the problem that Alex Pang points out in his book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less:

“When we define ourselves by our work, by our dedication and effectiveness and willingness to go the extra mile, then it’s easy to see rest as the negation of all those things. If your work is your self, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.”

Sure, he’s pointing out that we should get over that—that we should open ourselves to the idea that we’re more than our work. 

But honestly, decades have shown that I’m probably not going to change on this one, so I’m redefining rest to be part of my work. As soon as I say that, I can almost feel my hand rising into the air. Oooh, I know this one! Pick me! 

Last weekend, my wife challenged me to stay in bed and rest for a full twenty-four hours. Because she presented it as a job—almost a dare—I did it. 

And for the first time in weeks, the next morning, I felt great. Rest, who knew? (Besides everyone?) 

Obviously, I ended up doing too much and exhausting myself because I had that burst of energy the next day, but it proved something to me. 

I can be good at rest if I just change my view of it. 

If I can earn a gold star, I’ll attempt anything, it turns out. And I’m a goddamn adult. Guess who buys the gold stars in this house? That’s right! I DO. 

So I’m giving myself the stars, as many as I want.

(All of them. I want all the stars.) 

I’m reminding myself that my worth isn’t linked to my productivity, and it never will be, no matter how much I want it to be. 

I’m worthy of those gold foil stickers. 

I’m worthy of this BedJet. And the jazz. And the candle. And the wife who just popped her head in the bedroom to see if I needed more water, which I would have also been worthy of had I not just had two glasses in the last hour. 

And I’m worthy of rest, right now. 

Just as I am. 

What about you?

Does rest need to be your one job at some point today? 

You’re worthy of rest.

You’re worthy of it not when you get enough done, or when you do something right, or when you prove to everyone else that you deserve it (including yourself), but right now. Whenever you need or want it. 

So I’m sending you with the power of my mind the permission to do something, anything, like watch reality TV while your brain and body repair themselves. 

And then give yourself all the gold stars, because you’ve earned them, just by making it this far in life.  

The post How to Rest When You’re a Workaholic appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 214: Bonnie Tsui on Finding Flow in Writing (and in the Water)

Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and longtime contributor to The New York Times. She is the author of American Chinatown, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Her new book, Why We Swim, was published by Algonquin Books in April 2020; it was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Boston Globe bestseller, and an L.A. Times Book Club pick and bestseller. Her first children’s book, Sarah & the Big Wave, about big-wave women surfers, will be published by Henry Holt for Young Readers in May 2021.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #214 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And if you watch on the YouTube or you might just be able to hear the smile in my voice, I’m so excited to be sharing with you today my interview with Bonnie Tsui for, for her book, Why We Swim. As you may know, I have become a swimming aficionado in the last year and a half or so. I never would have taken winter off had I known that come March, I would not be able to keep swimming the way that I wanted to. So when I saw her book in the store, I had to have it, I grabbed it, I read it, I loved it. And she was kind enough to come on the show and talk about the writing and talk about swimming a little bit, and I just couldn’t be more thrilled to have spoken to her. So I hope you do enjoy that, which is coming up and around here, things are moving briskly. I am about 62,000 words into the book that I’m writing. And actually right now, today, I’m having a little bit of a panic moment where I realized as usual, I don’t have a plot and maybe I need to have a dark moment that I’m moving toward and maybe I need to have something that makes that dark moment happen.[00:01:41] So this afternoon I will be spending some time actually thinking, using some of the intellection quality from the Clifton strengths that I need to write my books, so I’m kind of looking forward to doing that and rejiggering some things. What I don’t do in a first draft ever is go back and fix anything that would bog me down and I would never move forward. But I do need to remind myself of what’s actually in the book. So about at this point, every time during a book, I like to, I have a little process that I do to look over the book and kind of remind myself of what’s in there. What my goal was, who these characters are, it’s time to get in there and just touch these things again, so I’m kind of excited to do that. Also, it means that I don’t have to do my word count today because my work is actually going to be rejiggering. And I’m only going to spend a few hours this afternoon doing it, doesn’t need to be done again. And then tomorrow I’ll be right back into the first drafting again, which I’m still really loving. So, I’m a brand new person when it comes to that kind of thing. [00:02:47] What else is going on? It has been just very busy lately as I closed out one section of 90-days-to-done and 90-day-revision, and this is your official announcement. It is probably, I’m going to say almost, most definitely your only announcement that you will get, if you have been thinking about joining 90-days-to-done, I actually opened two sections this time because of demand and the first one is full. It filled up almost instantly. And I have about four slots left in the second section. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about what 90-days-to-done is about. So this is, this is what it is. The section that is open, we’ll meet on zoom starting January 1st, going through March 31st, we’ll meet on zoom at, on Tuesdays at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM, Eastern time. So if that doesn’t work for you, you can just tune this out. But this is what we do in 90-day- to-done. It is for people who want to write their books and it’s just been taking them longer than they thought. It is for people who have never put up word on the page. It is also for people who have half a book, 75% of a book, but just can’t get to the end. It is for novels and memoirs. What it is not a useful class for is nonfiction. [00:04:12] That is about, you know, how to start your business, that kind of really straight up nonfiction. But if you’re writing a novel or a memoir, this class is for you. It is creativity within constraints. You have 90 days, you don’t have six months. You don’t have a year. You are not wasting time. You do the work because of this constraint and be, and what is the really magic part is that it will be better. Your work will be better because of that constraint. I like to remind people that it is never easy to find the time to do the writing of your heart. And it only gets harder as we move forward in our lives. So the time is now, if you want to do this, what else are we doing in this class? I’m just looking at the page here. If you are interested in this, you could go look at it rachaelherron.com/90daystodone the number 90, nine-zero days to done, what you get in it is accountability. You get the one hour weekly live class where there are, a rotating hot seat where we talk about your work. Each meeting is recorded and shared afterward in case you can’t attend live, but I do expect you to attend most of them live because that’s where, so much of the good juicy-ness is, is talking with each other about our work. You get a detailed plan of action every week I teach something new, while at the same time you are writing your book. There is homework, it’s a doable word quota based on your goals. There is no critique in class. However, you, there is a way that you can share some of your work with me. First drafts are too early to critique that kills writers, it stalls writers in their tracks. This is not the class to do that. But the accountability, that action plan is there and you get community, these communities that I put together in 90-days-to-done, they stick together. They stay together. [00:06:13] My classes that ended last week have already met this week without me to continue meeting together and supporting each other. Just wanted to share a couple of testimonial quotes, and then we will jump into the interview. But Beverly Armie Williams said about 90-days-to-done; “This wasn’t the first novel I’ve ever finished, but it may well be the least painful one I’ve written. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write, or rather, as the saying goes, I love to have written, but if I’m going to have written, I got to write. And 90-days-to-done provided the space, helped me carve out and commit to the time and built a supporting, supportive writing community in order to get that novel finished. Best of all, Rachael offered craft lessons, useful as a brush-up if you studied writing and priceless if not, answered any and all questions without making me feel dumb and a weekly meeting that was the cornerstone of our community. Rachael’s lessons and handouts are clear, smart, and sensible. Just what a writer needs during the thrills and bumps of getting a novel done in 90 days. And actually Beverly just finished 90 day revision with me too. So that was awesome. [00:07:15] And M Donald says, Rachael Heron is a gift. I’ve taken a ton of classes, both online and in person, but this is the very best class I’ve ever taken. I went from zero words written on the book I’ve dreamed of writing for years, to writing the end for the first time ever in 90-days-to-done. I never thought I could do it, but she showed me how. So that is enough of a commercial for this class. Again, I said, four slots left. They will probably be gone by the end of the weekend. But you can always go check rachaelherron.com/90daystodone. If the classes, both classes are full, there will be a signup form where you can get pre alert the next time I opened these. That’s how these classes filled so fast because people were on the pre alert list. So do put yourself on that if you’re interested in 90-days-done, or 90-day-revision. 90-day-revision filled practically before I opened it with students who were in 90 days to done who are guaranteed a slot in 90-day-revision. Most of them just moved right over. So that means it filled without me opening it. So I do apologize that that was a class that you were hoping for and what else? I’m just feeling very grateful today. I’ve got a candle burning behind me. I am about to write after I pushed send on this podcast, I’m going to jump into the book and start to rejigger. And I just freaking love my job. And I’m so grateful that I get to do it. And I’m so grateful to you for listening. And, when you reach out and tell me that you liked the podcast that you listened, that you were writing because of something that somebody said on the podcast, it makes my whole life. You can always reach out to me at Rachael at RachaelHerron.com, or find me wherever I am on the internet. And I would love to hear from you. Okay, let’s jump into the interview. I know you’re going to love it. And I know you’re going to want to swim afterwards. All right, we’ll talk soon, my friend.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:11] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Bonnie Tsui. Hello Bonnie!

Bonnie Tsui: [00:09:16] Hi, Rachael. I’m so glad to be here with you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:19] I have been looking forward to this so much. There, there are times when, you know, publishers send me books and then, you know, automatically I get to speak to the writers. But my favorite thing to do is when I pick up a book and love it, and then reach out to the author and get them here and you, let me, let me give your bio first. And then I’ll, then I’ll jump into heaping praise upon your head. Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and longtime contributor to The New York Times. She is the author of American Chinatown, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Her new book, Why We Swim, was published by Algonquin Books in April 2020; it was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Boston Globe bestseller, and an L.A. Times Book Club pick and bestseller. Her first children’s book, Sarah & the Big Wave, about big-wave women surfers, will be published by Henry Holt for Young Readers in May 2021.  So, wow. And I have this theory about your book and, and tell me what you think, and you might think I’m just completely off base, but I think it couldn’t have come out at a better time.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:10:26] It is super weird. Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:28] weird.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:10:27] So first all it is weird to be putting out, you know, a book about swimming in a time when most people couldn’t swim. And we talked about that a little bit already, but, it is, you know, of course the silver lining of that is that people had time to think about their relationship with something. Something that they probably took for granted, you know, and, you know, again, like many silver linings of this like crazy ass year would be that, you know, there’s some time for contemplation. There’s some time for appreciation of all of the things we’ve lost, but also what we will so acutely appreciate so much more on the other side of this. And of course swimming is one of those things and you know, of course over the arc of what is it, eight months now that, you know, many people have been able to return to the water, whether it’s open water or some of the local pools have reopened. And they are coming back with, you know, it’s just like, a ferocity of appreciation and just attention to the moment. And so, I also think like, you know, people had time to write, you know, I have been the recipient of just these glorious letters, you know, highs and lows, people are saying, I’ve cried when I read your book and I thought, that’s not what I thought was going to happen, you know? Like I’m like, you know, this book is an appreciation of swimming and how much, of course, I personally appreciate it, but also the, sort of framework of it as like this inquiry into our human relationship with water and with something and it is a very curious relationship because we are the really unique in, terrestrial mammals and that we have to be taught how to swim. We don’t instinctively know how to do it from birth. And so that’s an interesting, you know, sort of like mind, like tickle, like you have to kind of wrap your head around that and you know, and so this book is explores so much of, of what it is that fascinates us about water and why want to get into our call to it. And, yeah, it’s, it was strange to, to, I would not have been able to anticipate this moment. None of us could, but it’s, you know, that’s the silver lining. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:42] Yeah. Yeah. I think I mentioned maybe in my email that I was, I I’ve always been able to swim, like I was taught when I was a kid, but I was taught by some, you know, somebody’s dad, maybe my own dad, I don’t remember, in a, in a, you know, somebody’s pool and I’ve never, I’d never done it well. And I, last year I’d gotten, or maybe two years ago, I’d gotten really into the idea of swimming and I took lessons, real serious lessons and learned that it doesn’t have to be this flailing out of breath, like panting, just trying to keep yourself alive. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:13:13] Doesn’t have to be a struggle.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:14] And it shouldn’t be a struggle. I want to, as, as my teacher said, you know, the more you relax, the better your swimming is. And I had never known that and she taught me how to just stand on top of the water and move. And I had been having these real celebrations of, you know, the body and being in the moment, I think there’s no better place for me personally, to be in the moment than in the water.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:13:35] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:36] And I regret every single day of this last winter, when I didn’t go to the mills pool, which is my pool. I would drive by and I would see the steam rising off it and I thought, no, it’s just, it’s just too cold. I’m not going to get in there. I don’t think I’ve ever regretted anything more. Lying on the couch, just reading your book and absorbing it. I think I was just your perfect target market to get into that deep contemplation. So before-

Bonnie Tsui: [00:14:01] Thank you. I also love to hear it. I just want to say that I love to hear that about your experience taking lessons and, and, creating this new relationship with water that was easy. Like that’s the thing that I wanted to communicate with the book for sure.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:17] And it was absolutely in the book, the, the beauty and the magic. I’ve always thought it’s magic that we can enjoy being inside a medium in which we cannot survive. You know, if you pull me one inch under, I won’t live through it.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:14:31] Right.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:32] And hold me there, but, but otherwise it’s just the, it’s the place where my body feels the best, you know? And it always has been, I’ve always been a person who wants to be surrounded by water, but, and embracing that. And you and I talked a little bit in email about how I have embraced open water swimming. And I actually did, I did get to aquatic park and it was wonderful. I’ve only been there once. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:14:52] Great job.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:53] Yeah, it was. Are you still swimming out there? Where are you swimming?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:14:57] I am. So where I had been swimming a lot over the pandemic was that Keller beach in Richmond. So on the East side of the-

Rachael Herron: [00:15:06] Wait, I haven’t seen that I’m in Oakland so that

Bonnie Tsui: [00:15:08] You should go there and it’s great. It’s a similar, in that it’s a protective little cove 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:17] You’re blowing your mind right now.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:15:19] Yeah. So look it up. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:21] I’m going to go, like, maybe like after this podcast, I’m just going to go throw on my. Do you go, do you go wetsuit or no wetsuit?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:15:28] I have gone both, just depending on the water, but I, I was, I was especially careful in the early days of pandemic because you know, you’re, you’re out there by yourself. Sometimes I would be swimming with, sort of at a distance with friends, but, just not knowing what the conditions were and then becoming comfortable with them. To, to not want to get in trouble in a way that would risk anyone around me. So I was very careful with just, temperature and all that cause not again, not knowing. But I mean, now I definitely would wear a wetsuit. It’s pretty chilly. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:05] I’m glad to hear that. Perfect. Okay. So can, so you are writing about all of this and doing all this, but you’re also a longtime contributor to the New York times. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process when and where and how do you get it done?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:16:20] Sure, yeah. I mean, I’m clearest and best in the morning, you know? I, the ideal, my ideal writing day is that I get up early and either I go surfing at first light or I get a couple of hours of writing and thinking it and, and then I, you know, I would hit the pool. Like that’s what was my normal routine was where I would go to the Albany pool near here. And, actually I got to swim and I got a lane reservation at the Albany pool this morning so I, 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:53] I’ve been trying to make one, I keep, I keep missing it cause I’m not a resident. So I’ve gotta go,

Bonnie Tsui: [00:16:57] The next round will be in a couple of weeks, I think. And it was sort of like old times because I, I woke up early and I kind of did a little bit of fiddling around and writing and then I went to the pool and I came back and I was sort of getting ready for, to talk to you. And I got a little bit of writing in and I just thought like, it’s, it was a little bit of this normalcy that I, that I like with my writing practice and I mean by like two or three in the afternoon, I’m fried, like I just can’t really hold big thoughts. And so I like in the afternoon to be in the input mode, I’d like to be reading and just, you know, lying on the couch, just, you know, being, having other people’s words kind of flows through me. And then, I use Scrivener to write, and it’s a fantastic program, especially for like long form work that I wrote while we swim using that program. What I discovered is that, there’s like, you know, you have Scrivener installed on your laptop, but also I have it on my phone so that if I’m lying on the couch and reading something and I have like, a moment of insight, and I want to note it down in the document that I’m working on, I will just take my phone, open it up and I can type it in. And the ease of that, you know, sort of like friction removing some of the friction to like make notes in the work itself. I really love that. So like, I, again, like it’s the morning is at times when I need to be thinking bigger, clearer thoughts, and then sort of the afternoon, I let myself drift a little bit and putter around and, you know, I, I read a ton. And so I, I need that, you know, creative juice going from, from that conversation in my mind with other writers 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:47] That is, that you’re basically describing my perfect day too. I get too caught up. I get too much email and I’m always doing that in the afternoon instead of lying around reading. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:18:56] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:57] But lately my goal has been to get at least two hours of reading a day.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:18:59] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:00] Just got to fit it in somewhere. So,

Bonnie Tsui: [00:19:01] Yeah, for sure. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:02] What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:19:06] I think that the mushy zone, when the idea has yet to coalesce and solidify, I have trouble with that because I’m sort of like, I got this feeling, maybe that I, it’s around some topic that I want to write about. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what the specifics are, I don’t know how it would, what shape it would take, but it’s just sort of like this tickle and the weird thing is that once it finally solidifies into specifics where I’m like, oh, this is the argument, this is the, this is the, this is the thread I can pull to you know, create a piece, I feel like an idiot because it seems so clear. Like, why didn’t I, it’s so obvious. And oftentimes that comes out in conversation with

Rachael Herron: [00:19:49] Yes.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:19:51] Right. Even, not even writer friends, like friends, close, just people I love having conversations with, and so, I have really missed that. And I actually, I was talking to a couple of writer friends of mine from the San Francisco writer’s grotto over the last couple of days, and, you know, the, the absence of daily chance, spontaneous interactions, you know, when we would be in our writing, writer’s collective, and, you know, I would even have been in my office and I would kind of come out and get like a cup of tea or something, and I’d run into someone in the hallway and have like a 10 minute conversation that just got my, got me excited and got my brain going in a different direction and solv- and, and sort of obliquely solve the problem that I had been having. Like, I miss that so much. I really missed. So, so now it’s just more difficult to activate that, you know, the idea to the solid, tangible thing to really like tackle and chew on, But I, I think that what I need really need to what’s become clear to me is that I need to have more conversations like this. You know, this is very, it gets my energy up and my brain going in a way that’s very stimulating and I miss that.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:08] I miss that too. That, especially that’s, that chance, spontaneous conversation. I was, I was part of a really amazing women’s co-working space that didn’t actually make it through the pandemic and I just, I really, really missed that. But yeah, that, that, that coalescing, that feels so, so like you said, inevitable, like how did I not see this? There’s even a level at times where I’m like, that’s so obvious and I didn’t see it. Can I trust this? Is this even good, even though, you know, it is, you can feel it. So what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:21:38] I really love reporting. So I love going out and reporting and talking to people and collecting their stories and having them share their stories with me. I find that so, invigorating and exciting because it’s like they have invited you into their world. They’ve opened the window into their, you know, whatever their reality is, they, you know, are a marine biologist or they, you know, or construction worker or they’re, an emergency room doctor. I just feel like, I always feel very lucky to be able to have that momentary connection. And then I like, I, I also really honor that trust, and I love this sort of like the, the phone calls we’ll have afterwards that feel very intimate or the email exchanges or the text exchanges or whatever.  And then, one of the most satisfying thing for me is of course, like you finished a story, polished it, you’ve really honed it. And then you get the kicker just right. And then you’re like, and then just send it off, it’s gone. Like, that’s very satisfying. I mean, sometimes it comes back to you and then you’re like, and then they’re like, yeah, no, that’s not good. But I do think that when you finish it and you hit the tone just right to your ear, your internal ear, like that’s very satisfying. And there’s something to be said about you being true to your own, you know, your own voice and your own, where your thoughts and your conclusions take you and certainly it’s, I, I really enjoy that editor interaction too, but, when you feel that it’s right on your own, before you send it on, like, that’s very satisfying. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:29] There’s nothing better than that, and I really want to make clear that your, that intimacy that you foster with your subjects and a joy with which you do that part of the work is so clear in your writing. I just kept, you know, and I, I read so many books as well, but, but my wife knows when I was lying on the couch, reading this book, I just kept sitting up and saying, I love every word of this. I loved it when I was just with you, just with you in the water. And then I loved it when you were with these incredible other athletes that you’re talking to. And it was, you have such a way of bringing. The factual and the, the reportage into your work, but also remaining, very consistent to that intimate tone you have with the reader. And I feel like I learned a lot just from reading your book, just how to do that? So thank you so much. I’m going to say it again. Why we swim? Everybody should go get it. I picked it up on a whim. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:24:32] I was thinking about this question and it occurred to me recently that there is no substitute for printing something out and sitting with it. I mean, okay. So we’re all, there’s a many, in many ways, it’s so much more efficient and convenient to just be like fiddling around, you know, in the document, digitally moving things around. And, but when you kind of get to a certain point where you feel like you’ve hit, you’ve hit the limit of that, and I, and I felt that way recently and I printed it out and then I sat down with the pen and I think it’s, this is, I’m old enough to, remember the transition from like writing by hand, like writing creatively by hand to, like having it start, start and finished on the screen.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:28] Yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:25:29] Like when I was a kid, like in high school and I would write, I would write longhand and I love doing that. I actually remember getting my first laptop before going to college. Oh God, I’m so old. I was just like, oh, this is cool, you know. And we would type like nonsense things to each other on the screen, but it was weird to move like creative thought from pen and paper to the screen. And there was like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:54] I think I’m your age. And I absolutely remember that transition.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:25:58] And I was like, there’s so much possibility there, but it’s also, it’s a different way of thought it’s faster and you don’t have the time to, I think there is and, everyone knows this and there’s science supporting this, like the, the tempo, the pace of handwriting. It’s just a different connection you have with your thoughts and writing and creativity. And so, I think to, to have interject times when you, with whatever piece you’re writing, I think even a really short piece would benefit from that, even though probably most people wouldn’t necessarily take the time to do it, if they’re working very quickly and have a short deadline. But I think to have at least one time when you’re printing it out and you look at it and then you, everything is seen in a, you just see it in a different way and engage with in different ways. So like that from, even in this day and age of like, get out that freaking piece of paper and your pen and just, you know, like get at it.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:01] I really, I really do that when I’m very stuck and in fact, right, right before the pandemic, I was, I was in the co-working space, I remember this, I printed out a chapter of a book I was writing on because I was so frustrated and I literally got out the scissors and I went back,

Bonnie Tsui: [00:27:13] Oh, that’s so great.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:15] Like if I put this paragraph here that, you know, and it was really fun, it felt like playing again, you know. And it did create that connection. Yeah. That’s beautiful. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:27:28] Well, I have to say it has been in the last few years swimming.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:30] Yeah, I was gonna say it probably is. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:27:31] For sure, because before I wrote this book, I did not think about it like that. I did not inquire or interrogate why it is that I feel that, you know, going into the water immersion is beneficial to me. I just, I just thought about it more as, as pure exercise, you know, to kind of getting it out, getting out the eye out and then, and then sitting down, but really it’s now having really spent time interrogating that and talking to researchers about it, you know, doing a lot of reading and then understanding like observing very finally very attentively my own experience. You know, what am I thinking about when I’m in the water? How do I feel afterwards and sort of like what happens in the process of writing this book? And this is the last section of the book, especially on flow. It was very eye-opening for me. It, it, and it was sometimes weird.  And I’ve said this before, where I would go and go for a swim and I would in the morning and then I would say to myself, okay, what am I thinking about? What do I see? What do I taste? What do I smell? And then I would be in the locker room, like, you know, typing into my phone and then I would come home, then I would sit down and I would try to channel that again, but because it was, had just happened or, and I’ve been thinking about as I was doing also many like metal layers, really wonderful. And then I would read poetry or read some, creative work about swimming that kind of got at it from an, again, from like the oblique angles, like just the, I loved, exploring that. And, and I understand now, in a much more conscious way, how immersion, is related to my creativity is related to my writing practice in my life and how I feel I can access those parts of my brain.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:29] That is truly inspiring and I desperately want to go get in the water. I don’t care what water it is. It might be, it might have to be the bath tub today.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:29:36] After this conversation, you’re going to send me a photo. I’m like, I’m out, you know. Your hair is wet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:43] And I can’t wait. Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently? Your book is the best book I’ve read recently. So what is yours? 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:29:52] You flatter me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:53] I don’t lay it on the stick for, for most of my guests. I swear. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:29:57] I, I have, so I read mostly, I read a lot of books, but mostly I read fiction unless it’s related to, which is weird, right? I mean, unless it’s related to something that I’m working on, but I think it’s because fiction is so transporting, it just gets me out of my head. I just fall into the story. And I mean, I think it does feed back into my, my actual work as a journalist and a nonfiction writer because it, the creative ways that novelists or short story writers handle or poet, poets, handle language and handle reality. I kind of do take lessons, but they’re sort of like subconscious lessons in that right, and language and all that. But one of the books that I really loved recently was, is, is a novel called Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, and it’s so good. It is a very, it’s a novel about, like the intersection of lives, you know, and it takes its inspiration from a real life event, which is like, you know, in the nineties with, in LA, there was of course the race riots and, and, but also that it, it traces back to an event of, the shooting of a young black girl who, in a community store, who was buying, I think it was like a bottle of milk and the owner, the Korean owner of the store shot her, thinking that she was shoplifting or there was an argument and there was, so it was like a huge, and I remember this from when I was a kid, like there was a huge, you know, it was a huge moment in the news. And then of course, like the sort of larger societal racial justice and movements and things that follow that response to that was like in the community was really horrific, but also like called up a lot of things that had been sort of bubbling under the surface for a long time. And of course, incredibly timely now, in this, in this particular moment, a historical moment now, and the fact that she wrote this novel, and, it’s just like, it’s a gripping story and the characters are so finely drawn, they’re so vivid and she wasn’t able to inhabit these characters and they’re, you know, it’s fictionalized, but it draws on very real events and, but she’s able to inhabit the characters and bring them to life in a way that you just, again, like this was like a distant memory for me, but then it has been kind of called up, in, in recent times and it feels so freshly timely, riveting and profoundly moving and, like an act of generosity and love to like, put that out in the world, like, and how the characters kind of feel the consequences of, of their family’s actions and everything. Everyone is connected, and I just was really affected by it. I really loved that book. And I think it actually came out well last year. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:01] This is a very, this is always a very selfish question for me, because this is how I build to my TBR pile, but you said it was your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, is that right? Okay. Fabulous. Just went to the top of my list. Thank you very, very much. And now can you tell us, tell us maybe the log line or the premise behind Why We Swim although we’ve already talked a lot about it and where can we find you and it, and all of that?

Bonnie Tsui: [00:33:26] So, Why We Swim my elevator pitch. It’s a cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:34] It’s beautiful, yeah.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:33:35] And you know, it is, structured, you know, of course the question is presented in the title while we swim, and then it’s structured in five different thematic ways we can answer that question so, first of all, first and foremost, survival, right? We have to learn how to survive the water life and death, it’s a very, very, very easy thing to understand. But I explore all the different ways that what survival means to us, right? As a species and, and then moves to once swimming can, you know, you can swim for survival, it can mean so many other things. So, wellbeing, you know, health healing, and then community, you know, in a team like with your shared tribe and, and, competition, of course, like it’s the subsuming of, you know, the, the life-death, you know, adrenaline in sport, right? So in competition, we just really love the absence of like having to really swim for your life. Like you, you know, you do it against the clock and then flow, which is what we talked about, a little bit already, but just, what does it mean, you know, mind, body to be experiencing the state of flow where you just are completely lost and immersed in something that you’re doing, that you lose all track of time and also self, right? You are really one with whatever it is that you’re doing. And what if you did that while you were swimming? Like what, what does that, I kind of explored that a bit and, it was really such a, I, it was a joy to write the book. I mean, I think I thought about it for many years. I struggled with the structure kind of thinking like, do I really want to do this? How would I do it? It’s such a huge topic. Why am I doing it? And I want it to be a frame that help other people’s stories, right? So again, I’m a journalist, but I’m also like a character in the book, your guide. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:31] Which is my favorite kind of non-fiction honestly. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:35:35] Yeah. It’s, well, it was hard to figure out how to do it right though. You know, it’s always the balance of how much of yourself, how much of your characters and are those and, and do those butt up against each other in weird ways and certainly because, as a journalist, I write in a certain mode and it as a, you know, an essay as I write in a certain it’s more personal and so how to meld the two and I feel very, I’m really happy with how it turned out, but it could have gone horribly wrong there.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:04] There but for the grace. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:36:07] Exactly.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:08] I, I, every time you would switch into another mode in the book, I would be at the same point, disappointed that I was leaving the mode before and excited to move into the next one, which was, it’s always a sign of a good book to me. The flow is what kind of interests me almost more than anything. And I do have that in the pool and I am not an open water swimmer yet to the point where I have any flow yet I am definitely trying to exist.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:36:35] Yes, but that’s also like that acuteness and that ferventness, I think, is very cleansing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:41] Yes. Totally.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:36:42] In a, like you are erase everything else that you’ve been worrying about because you’re so consumed.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:48] There’s nothing else. There’s no like, novel deadline. There’s no coronavirus. 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:36:53] Yes. Exactly.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:54] There’s just, I need to make it home. And you’re 

Bonnie Tsui: [00:36:56] Great. In a messed up kind of way. It’s great. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:01] Well, I want to keep you on the line after we say goodbye, because I would just want to pick your brain for one second about, Keller, but, thank you so much for being on the show. This was fantastic. And thanks for your book.

Bonnie Tsui: [00:37:10] Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

The post Ep. 214: Bonnie Tsui on Finding Flow in Writing (and in the Water) appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 212: Bryan Washington on How Much Setting Matters

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The New York Times Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His new book, Memorial, is the book he wanted to read, the one he didn’t see out in the world. Something that was funny and sexy and yet at times startlingly emotional, featuring people of color, queer people of color, living their lives and dealing with break-ups and falling in love, dealing with being sick, with a parent’s death, with confronting who your parents are as you become an adult, with the meaning of family. He lives in Houston.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #212 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled you’re here with me today as I talked to Bryan Washington, it was a treat to talk to him about his book, which I really, really enjoyed. And we go pretty deep into why setting matters and how setting can act as a character, which is something that I get asked about a lot. So I know that you will enjoy this interview with Bryan. What’s going on around here, NaNo is continuing a pace. I am still ahead of schedule. Who Am I? I’m never ahead of schedule. So that is great. Although I got to admit that today, I just don’t want to write, which means I will write eventually. I have come up with a theory and it’s called The Bra Theory. The Bra Theory of getting your work done, getting your creative work done and it’s a Patreon essay. I’m going to be sending out this week and really it goes like this: You need to set yourself up for success. Feelings don’t matter. Your feelings will always tell you that you don’t want to write, that you don’t want to do your creative work because doing other things is always going to be easier.[00:01:29] So we set ourselves up for success and we don’t ask questions about our feelings. That is what I have been thinking about a lot. And it’s helpful to remember that I cannot feel like writing, and I could do it anyway. And the truth is, and you know this, is when your fingers are on the keyboard or when your pen is in your hand and your body is in motion and you are making words, that is when the muse comes to tickle your brain pan. That is when she shows up. She doesn’t show up when you’re hoping. That she shows up to bring you to the page. I think there’s this, there’s this myth that the muse takes you by the hand and gently cresses your brow and gets you to do the writing. Absolutely not. You must tempt the muse to you. You must do the work that brings her, to whisper those ideas in your brain that you wouldn’t have had if you were not working.[00:02:27] So I’m thinking a lot about that this week and I will do my words later, but I have been trying to get about 2,500 words every time I sit down, which means that I’m ahead and I want to beat my goal of finishing this first draft of the novel by the end of December 31st, because I want the full 90,000 words and I really am still playing in this book. I have no idea what the F I am doing. The plot changes daily. My characters change daily. I have a million abandoned scenes that I started and thought, Oh God, what is, what is this? I’m not going to go that direction. I have a tendency to make things dark. That’s what I do and I don’t want that. I want this book to be lighter than a dark book. And I keep trying to add addiction, homelessness, eviction, and I keep having to back away that is not this book. This book is to amuse me and to amuse a reader. And therefore I keep having to think about amusement and play and restarting. And and when I say restart, I am not saying that I’m ever looking at the beginning of the book. I just mean restarting where I am, where I think I am in the book. Again, really having no idea what’s going to happen next and it’s fun. It’s working. Okay. See, I’m almost talking myself into wanting to write today. [00:03:48] However, it doesn’t matter if I want to, or if I don’t want to. I will just do it. That’s what we do, we’re writers. What else? Oh, I also must do page proofs this week. I’ve had three weeks to do them and I haven’t done them at all. What page proofs are, is looking over what the proof reader has done and making sure that you don’t need to make any of the last minute tiny tweaks. I find doing this very tedious. So, I actually, I think I told you about this on the podcast. I actually hired my friend, Katrina, who is a brilliant copy editor to go over my book for me to look for those kinds of titles. I will also do it, but I’m, I’m trusting Katrina’s hand in this. This is a traditional New York published book and I still took the money out of my pocket to do that because it’s important to me. So, speaking of publishing news, Ooh, we knew this was going to happen. Simon & Schuster has been up on the for sale block and I and everyone else was predicting the Penguin Random House might assimilate to them and they have, they spent $2 billion and billion with a B of course, and purchased Simon & Schuster, which is worrisome. It is further contracting the market. Instead of- we used to have a big six and we went down to the big five when Penguin bought Random House. Now we’re down to the big four. And what that means is there will inevitably be cuts in prints will be axed, editors will lose their jobs and fewer books will be produced.[00:05:25] They will be relying more and more on the blockbuster model. They really need to publish the big blockbuster names, used to be in publishing in traditional publishing they would take chances on the little guy. They would support the mid-list author as they go through being mid-list for years and years and years hoping for a breakout. And then they would have the breakout successes, the anomalies, that would kind of carry the press along. They don’t do that anymore. Mid-list is always being rumored to be completely dead. Although I will say I’ve had a thoroughly mid-list career. So it’s, it’s, it’s worrisome. However, if you’re hearing this news, I want to reassure you that in the, how long I’ve been in? In the 14 years that I’ve been actively inside the publishing industry, the sky has been falling over and over and over again. And the sky has been falling in the publishing industry for the last 200 years. It is always falling. So I want to remind you, it never falls all the way, they were, there will always be writers. There will always be readers willing to purchase our stories. And that’s what it comes down to. So, the news about Simon & Schuster is not heartening. But it’s also not killing your chances. So chin up, we move forward. We understand that publishing is a very tricky business and we also rejoice in the fact that self-publishing is so viable nowadays as a way to be read and as a way to make money. And if you are not, if you listen to my show and you don’t listen to other writing shows, number one, thank you for listening to my show, but you know, you should branch out to somebody who talks about the news more often and better than I do. I always recommend Joanna Penn’s show The Creative Pen. She has a very nice model of always having the news right up front, and then an interesting interview so if you’re not following The Creative Pen, I always recommend that you do that. [00:07:22] Let’s see. So I’ll be doing those patrons, those Patreons, hopefully today, or, Thanksgiving tomorrow because, I am one of those people who’s just so grateful. I don’t have to do family holidays this year. I love my family. I love them. I love being around the vast majority of my family, which is actually very small. It’s my family and Lala’s family. We have, we have small families and I love them and I still don’t want to be around them for the holidays. Holidays are stressful. I have hated Thanksgiving since I was a little girl. It’s just too much stress around a meal that lasts for 20 minutes and then you’re full. I, it just, I just don’t get it. So the fact that my wife and I are just going to be staying in the house tomorrow I’m going to make a key lime pie and that is all I’m making. That might be Thanksgiving dinner along with the steak that we bought and that’s what we’re going to do, we might binge watch something just started. What’s his name? What’s it called? Lasso. Tom Lasso. Todd, you know the one I’m talking about the Lasso Show, Ted Lasso and it does seem to be very delightful as everyone told us. So we might binge a little bit of that, although we are not binge watchers ever, but that might be fun. And I might work on page proofs. So if you are American and celebrating Thanksgiving, I just realized this won’t come out until after Thanksgiving anyway. So I hope you had a nice day and I hope that you enjoyed your Turkey if you ate it.[00:08:53] I don’t understand why anybody’s Turkey, that stuff is dry. Cue the emails to me saying you’re not cooking it right. If it’s dry, I know that I have had good Turkey and it’s just not worth it. I’d rather eat so many other things. So, but I do hope that you enjoyed your holiday celebration if you celebrate it. And quick catch up on moving to New Zealand or moving forward. However, I have no idea how to do it. And I would like to just sit date that for the record. How does one think about packing a house when one has no clue when one might leave or how long all the paperwork will take or how long the sick dog will last that we’re not leaving without? I mean, we are leaving without her. She will have passed on, but our main focus right now is on keeping her comfortable. So I think a lot about New Zealand and do absolutely nothing except paperwork haven’t boxed a single thing. I don’t know how much we even want to take. So that’s one of those brain teaser, those problems that I, you know, lie in bed and think about, but have done almost nothing about besides that. So I’ll keep you posted. Now, let’s jump into Bryan Washington’s excellent interview. I hope that you will enjoy this half as much as I enjoy talking to him. And that will be a great deal for you my friend. I hope that you are writing. I hope that you are playing and remembering that it’s not so serious, everything can be fixed later. Everything. You can add plot and character to a book that you’ve already written. I truly believe that. So I wish you, my friends happy writing and it will see you soon. [00:10:29] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write  and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:47] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Bryan Washington. Hello, Bryan. 

Bryan Washington: [00:10:52] Hi Rachael. Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:54] I’m thrilled to have you. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction before we jump into talking about writing. Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize. The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The New York Times Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. That one just sounds cool. His new book Memorial, is the book he wanted to read, the one he didn’t see out in the world. Something that was funny and sexy and yet at times startlingly emotional, featuring people of color, queer people of color, living their lives and dealing with break-ups and falling in love, dealing with being sick, with a parent’s death, with confronting who your parents are as you become an adult, with the meaning of family and he lives in Houston. Bryan, your book has just really touched something in me. It is you wrote the book you wanted to see in the world. And you also wrote the book that is, is hard to find in the world. I believe I was telling my wife about it and she’s, next on the list to read it. I find it kind of starkly beautiful, is that okay to say? 

Bryan Washington: [00:11:59] I think it’s okay to say it

Rachael Herron: [00:12:00] I- there’s this there’s this sweetness and romance, and also just this beautiful, beautiful reality that is presented to us and I’m, I just love it. So I would love to talk to you about your writing process. This is your second book, right? The first one was at a short story collection. 

Bryan Washington: [00:12:20] Yes. This is the second go around of that the first novel. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:23] Yeah. Oh, that’s so exciting. Okay. So tell us, so you live in Houston, is this your full-time gig or do you have another gig?

Bryan Washington: [00:12:30] Oh, well, right now I teach at RISE. So I’m over there for a bit and little stones writing Memorial. I was actually teaching ESL and that was my job. And it was a chocolate job that I really loved. I like working with that cohort, and those kids, like it was really lovely gig, but I’m usually am teaching in some capacity and freelancing in some capacity and also working on longer stuff.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:55] Okay. So where do you fit that writing time in and how do you get your actual writing, writing done around all of that? 

Bryan Washington: [00:13:02] In the morning, you know, and usually I say in the morning, people say well, I’ll do that too but like I have to wake up at like 4:30 central time, and like I work until about like 8. So that’s my-

Rachael Herron: [00:13:16] I have this theory that like 4:30 is the sweet spot to get out for a writer. 

Bryan Washington: [00:13:20] It really is. Okay. Yeah. Usually people are like, I guess and they’re like, no you don’t. But like that’s, you know, you haven’t really- like I’m awake and I’m present, but like the day hasn’t destroyed me yet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:31] Yes

Bryan Washington: [00:13:32] It doesn’t like imparted its will on me. So I can, as far as like generative material is concerned, like I have to be up that early. If I’m editing, I can do that just any time of day, just about anywhere except maybe a plane, but yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Oh, my God. I love you say that, that you said that because every, all the other writers say, well, you know, I can get four hours of work done on a plane. I can’t do anything on a plane. I could just watch a movie.

Bryan Washington: [00:13:53] No, I can sit down and I can ask for like some tea and go to sleep on a plane. But beyond that, I’m just about useless. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:01] That’s awesome. So how has the pandemic affected where you write? If it has it all. You’re probably always at home at 4:30 in the morning. You’re not one of them

Bryan Washington: [00:14:12] No, no, I’m, I am now I’m at home at 4:30 in the morning. As far as where it’s almost exclusively like from my home, you know, and that’s been a radical departure in that like I spent a lot of last year sort of like bopping around doing promoting things. So I wrote quite a lot in airports, which I don’t mind at all, because you can be by yourself and like, it’s understood that, you know, you’re by yourself, but also you have a number of different things that are going on in the foreground. So that’s like an ideal writing environment, like a variation of that is like coffee shops, like they’re like a lot of boba shops and like part of town. So like, I’ll go there and then would, I would just you know, work at the boba shop and just drink cocoa and just like work and it was ideal. And you can order like crispy chicken, like hanging out, but you can’t do that anymore. So yeah, just staying at home. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I miss, I miss airports to write in and hotel lobbies were like the best. 

Bryan Washington: [00:15:13] That’s nice. I’ve never, have I ever tried writing in a hotel?

Rachael Herron: [00:15:17] Oh, I will just go. I live in Oakland, so I’ll go sometimes or I used to, go to San Francisco and just pick a hotel and go sit in the lobby.

Bryan Washington: [00:15:23] Oh really? That’s such a good idea. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:28] It’s great. The chairs are always comfortable. Nobody ever knows, like if you go to enough hotels, they don’t know that you’re 

Bryan Washington: [00:15:35] Nobody really says anything. Yeah. I can’t imagine anyone saying anything. That’s a great idea. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:39] So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Bryan Washington: [00:15:45] Setting is really tricky for me. Description is really tricky for me. So I have to come up with rules for myself sometimes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:55] Share your rules

Bryan Washington: [00:15:56] Yeah. They vary depending on the project, you know, depending on the length of the project. I mean, one for Memorial is that I want to at least 20% of every scene to be describing the world and to be filling in the world and telling something about the world. So it’s fascinating whether it was like the world of a room, whether it was the world of an outdoor bar, whether it was, you know, the world of the kitchen, even if it was like a recurring scene, like describing something new about that particular place, because a quick thing is that I don’t know. I feel like if there’s certain places that we can set a narrative where we maybe don’t have to do as much work, which can lead to a little bit of laziness, which I’m very guilty of, like very often that you can say that, you know, a narrative or a scene is taking place in the kitchen and then you can just stop and because. No, hopefully the majority of your readers will spend some time in a kitchen, like one kitchen or another. Like that’s all they need and then you can move on and that’ll work for some scenes. But I think like the story of it is the particularity of that particular kitchen, you know, or that particular room or that particular bar, like you can say bar and everyone will understand like the sort of emotional pocket and the sort of tonal pocket that the places, but maybe not the things that one character or another is observing about that particular space, because I feel pretty strongly that observation is just as much characterization as description, right? Like the things that, yeah. The things that your character sees, will tell us just as much about them as the things that they do or don’t do in tandem with are things that they don’t see or we’ll tell a good deal about them and what they don’t notice and who they don’t notice. So really good description and observations are a bit trickier and I have to be a bit more intentional about making myself like a lot of page time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:01] I have to go back and actually reread some parts because I have a hard time with setting in description too, we have some similarities and I would have guessed that 20% would have been too much and bothered me and it, and it never did. Like, it never felt like too much. I just felt like I was there. So you pulled that off really, really beautiful. 

Bryan Washington: [00:18:19] Thank you, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] Wow. Okay. So what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Bryan Washington: [00:18:24] My biggest joy is conversation in a lot of ways, like in dialogue, that is just as tricky structurally as description and setting is for me. But I could spend all day doing it in a lot of ways. Just sort of pulling out the conversations that characters have, and not only just like the conversation, but like what actually makes it onto the page. Cause I feel like I have to over write scenes or an iteration, Memorial is about 11 drafts or so, and the earlier iterations of the novel would appear deeply overwritten to the point of unrecognizability comparison to like the final iteration. But I feel like I had to overwrite that in order to get a sense of what each conversation was about, you know, cause like if you directly transcribed dialogue between most anyone in your life, like it would just be English, like unread. Like how are you? Okay. Like not really answering questions, just sort- because you have so many other cues that you can use and you have rapport. And all of those things are sort of understood and not on the page. So trying to find a way to choose what were then the dialogue that I have on the page would imply that rapport and apply, imply that context and imply the sort of visual cues that you know, your reader or your audience isn’t privy to on the page is all surely fun.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:56] You also do an incredible job of, of what they’re not saying between Benson and Mike, there is throughout a lot of the books, there is just so much unsaid and that is as much part of the dialogue as the words that are on the page visible. So, beautiful. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Bryan Washington: [00:20:14] A craft tip? Yeah. It sounds obvious to a point of redundancy, but reading aloud, right? Like reading, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:24] Reading your own work aloud?

Bryan Washington: [00:20:26] Yeah. Reading your work aloud in the middle of your editing it, because there’s a way in which a text like reads, like you just like sitting down and you like reading the thing and it can be really beautiful and lush, and then those switch which the text reads and the orality of attacks and the story of visual prism in which it can exist, can mask a lot of cluttered-ness and a lot of gaps in rhythm and sort of clunky dialogue that aren’t immediately discernible just by your eyes because you were, you and you wrote the thing and you’ve seen it X amount of time. So you’ve internalized a lot of ways, but even just hearing it and hearing yourself, read it out loud, at least for me, like I’m able to find so many things to change and to fix and to make the narrative and interactions between the characters a bit more cohesive. So that’s something that is a pretty major part of like the editing process is just reading through, for in Memorial, the one of the last, last, last drafts I went to like, we can’t go now, but there’s like a Korean spa that opened up in Houston, like way up on highway six. So maybe 20 minutes away from me and like for, you know, the final iteration I just went there and I stayed the night, so I was there for two days. And I just ran through the whole draft, like just like aloud to myself, just to have a sense of like what it sounded like. And even in you know, that sort of last, last, like you have to turn in your draft or we will terminate your contract iteration. I was so finding like so many things that I could change, you know? So that, that’s something that’s been really helpful to me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:18] I love hearing that that is one of those things that I always mean to do, and I never quite get the time to do it. And I wonder if I’ll, I’m supposed to get first pass pages pretty soon. And maybe I’ll do that. I’m worried about how many things I would find to change. 

Bryan Washington: [00:22:33] You’ll find so many things

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] No they tell you what, like, you know, you can change up to like 8% without it, you know, without getting in trouble. 

Bryan Washington: [00:22:38] I find so many things, but I’ve been really fortunate that my team has been really and my editor specifically like Laura specifically super amenable, so like if there’s like a major thing I want to change or a thematic thing that I want to change, like I’ll email her, if it’s just like a handful over it will just like you know, change it and, but they’ve, my editor has only been receptive and only wanted to push, you know a draft from trying to be like the best iteration of what it can be. So I’m just really fortunate to be back in the show. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:09] So you really do the reading at the very last minute, or do you do the reading in pre in earlier drafts as well? Reading out-

Bryan Washington: [00:23:16] I do it throughout, I do it throughout which probably

Rachael Herron: [00:23:18] You do it throughout. That’s a lot of time

Bryan Washington: [00:23:19] It is. It’s not like writing Memorial wasn’t, like it wasn’t, like when I think about it cause like now I’m on the other, you know side of like the actual process of it and able to think about it even I’m just wow that’s like a bit much. You know, like 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:36] let it work

Bryan Washington: [00:23:37] Yeah, I felt like I still like even though it was a bit much I still do feel as if though like I had to do all the overwriting and a lot of that reading aloud and a lot of that spending time with each of the characters, because a part of what got me to finish the novel in a lot of ways was not knowing what the conclusion would look like or where it would end up and wanting to write toward figuring out what that would look like. So I needed to know who people were before I could have a sense of like where they would end up.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:09] That’s really, really cool. What thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way?

Bryan Washington: [00:24:18] Normally I’d say cooking, but I’ve talked so much about it. It’s probably like a very obvious thing. So I won’t say that for this, but if there’s a city in which I’m comfortable and just walking by myself in it, that impacts the writing and a lot of explicit, but also implicit ways. And that I think that you can do so much work on the page when you’re trying to build a place through the scenes that are occurring around the, I suppose, main narrative. Right? So we’ll have a scene where the, the mid-scale or, you know, just sort of driving to one place or another, whether it’s grocery store or whether it’s, you know, drop something off the GPS, like wherever and they’ll notice things. And those things will be stories and, and of themselves. And like, as the writer, like I may know that I’m using this observation or this moment in order to show something about the character, show something about the place and it’s a tool and a device, but I can’t approach it that way. Like I have depression, seeing you learn autonomous story that is occurring simultaneously. So really just being like open to observations like this, like walking around and without clear point or end goal in mind has been one way of, just sort of hard lining that many different things can be true simultaneously. And like many different narratives can be running simultaneously, which is something that was really helpful to have the, I was drafting and also editing 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:06] Are people saying to you, things like Houston is a character in this book?

Bryan Washington: [00:26:10] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:26:11] Okay. Yeah, I figured that was, that was, you’re probably tired of hearing that. My students always ask like, well, y’all want to make the area a character. How do I do that? And, and I’m just, I like to tell students what I know and to that I’m always like, I don’t know, I can’t write setting to save my life. And you do it. You, you, you know Houston, you love Houston, at least I think you do. It comes through as you do. Okay. The only part of Houston I know is like the queer section cause I, I stayed with

Bryan Washington: [00:26:39] Oh mantras?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:40] Yes! Two of my, one of my friends, he works at a murder by the book. Yeah, John, John. And, when we go, we stay with them and people give Houston a bad rep. It is, I loved that town. And maybe it’s because I’m with people I love when I’m there, but it was so nice being there and seeing it through the eyes of someone who knows it and loves it. 

Bryan Washington: [00:27:04] Yeah. Admittedly, it can be a tricky city to untangle in a short period of time. Right? Like it’s like one of those places where if you were spending or planning like a trip to Houston, maybe not now because we should all be staying at home. But if that weren’t the case, then you want it to pass by Houston, probably tell someone that I’d consider like, allotting like a week, you know, or at least five days, because there are certainly definitive parts of you know, Houston-ian culture within the larger American Canon, whether it’s NASA, whether it’s the rodeo, whether it’s like football or like a Texas high school football game. And those are certainly valid and pivotal for the culture, but it’s also a city in which, you know, many different things can be happening at the same time. So you have, you know, your rodeo in that context and that experience, and you also have a deeply vibrant Vietnamese food culture. And then you also have a deeply vibrant music culture, and then you have like a massive arts scene and museum scene, and you have all of the sprawl inside of that. And then you also have the sort of queer life within all of that. And you also have really lush art spaces and many of which are, you know, third places or operators are third places because it’s a tricky city and that we don’t have too many third places. So everyone utilizes the parks and utilize the free things. And because we only have, you know, a pretty, not so big amount of them, you know, folks from so many different ethnic and racial communities and various financial stratum and just walks of life that are coming to the same places. And it makes like a relief. It makes for a really, really interesting place. So I think that one, like tiny joy, like maybe specifically to me in writing about Houston, put a lot and also for a Memorial is that I can pull from all of these different sectors of the city. And that would be perhaps more feasible to experience and you know, a $27 book or using an e-reader like $15 book then to plan like a five-day trip where like you do all of the different things. So that’s been like a nice thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:46] I think maybe the reason I love Houston so much is as you’ve been describing it, it just reminds me of my favorite city in the world, which is Oakland. And we, we have those things. And, and also when I think of Houston and you’ll understand this, I think of freeways, I think of highways and how they bisect and dissect. And it’s the same thing here is that freeways actually create cultural lines, delineations. You know, below this point is this, above this point is that, we’ve got the Lake over here where everybody meets every single person. We’ve got these three restaurants where everybody goes, but over here, we’ve got the Vietnamese section and we do not have a queer section at all. However, 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:28] Wow

Rachael Herron: [00:30:29] No, not at all, but we do have more married lesbians than anywhere else in the whole world 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:35] Oh that’s around

Rachael Herron: [00:30:36] I know, it’s pretty 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:37] The world! That’s the

Rachael Herron: [00:30:38] The world. This is the, this is the capital of that. And it’s very clear. I think we’re just like all, all over the place, but, yeah. So thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for discussing Houston that way. I really love it. 

Bryan Washington: [00:30:50] Well, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:51] What is the best book you’ve read recently? Why did you love it?

Bryan Washington: [00:30:56] That’s a really good question. I read Nights Where Nothing Happened by Simon Hahn which is a novel that is on the way it comes out in a bit. It’s really lovely. Like super great and also Luster by Raven Leilani, which is so great. And also Bestiary by K-Ming Chang. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:19] I keep hearing about that 

Bryan Washington: [00:31:20] It’s really good. Like it’s so everything you heard it’s all true. It’s so good. Like it’s all true. There’s a book called, Tokyo Leno Station by Yu Miri, which was published a little while ago but it’s up for a National Book Award in Translating Fiction. So I’m really happy about that because that means that more people are going to read it. But I also just finished Helen Oyeyemi’s next novel that’s going to be on the way in a few months, like in the new year. And it’s really good and really interesting. And I want more people to read it so that I can ask them what they think about it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:19] Tell me her name again?

Bryan Washington: [00:31:20] Helen Oyeyemi, her last book was Gingerbread and it came out, I want to say last year, like she’s super-fast and she’s just brilliant. Like she’s so great.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:17] Oh, I’m going to look her up. Thank you. Speaking of wonderful books, that people need to look up, will you please, can you tell us a little bit about Memorial and where to find you?

Bryan Washington: [00:32:26] Yeah. So Memorial is at its heart, a love story between two queer CIS men and living in Houston. Benson, who is a black aftercare teacher and Mike, who is a Japanese-American chef at Tex-Mex Restaurant. And they’re trying to figure out what it means to be okay, just as people and also what it means just to be okay. It’s like a person among people and needs go. Mike’s mother helps them along in that journey. Yeah, Thank you. She’s like the emotional heart for the novel in a lot of ways. I’m on, I am on the bird app. I’m on Twitter. So I’m @brywashing and I am also on the internet off twitter, brywashing.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:17] Perfect. Bryan, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for writing this book for allowing us to talk to you about it. I, your book was one of those where I was giving up one day, you know, quitting writing forever. As I often, as I often I do it, like at least weekly, 

Bryan Washington: [00:33:31] Me too

Rachael Herron: [00:33:32] You know, we all have to, and you have to really mean it. And then you get on the couch and I got on the couch with your book and I was reading and it actually made me get up to write because it was so beautiful to hear the sentences I wanted to play. So thank you. 

Bryan Washington: [00:33:44] Thank you so much for having me, Rachael, take care, 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:47] Take care. Bye. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

The post Ep. 212: Bryan Washington on How Much Setting Matters appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 211: How to Write Dialogue for Characters Very Unlike Yourself

In this mini-episode, Rachael Herron answers how to write dialogue for characters who aren’t like you at all, as well as how to breathe life into an old, almost-dead book, and what the heck is the difference between a collection of essays and a non-chronological memoir? 

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron, and this is a bonus episode brought to you directly by my $5 Patreons. If you’d like me to be your mini coach for less than a large mocha Frappuccino, you can join too at www.patreon.com/rachael

[00:00:14] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #211 of “How do you Write?” Today is a mini episode where I answer the questions that you send me. I am your mini coach and I will answer anything that you want. Just become a member of my Patreon at the $5 a month and up level, and you get access to that. So I would like to say a heartfelt and heady and grateful, thanks to everyone on my Patreon, who are my patrons at every single level. You really make the difference in my life of me being able to sit down and do this podcast and to write these essays. I am about to send one out to this morning on, the bra theory of getting your work done. And it is not just for a sis female folk who might or might not wear bras. So doesn’t that peak your interest on you want to read that essay? You could read it for a dollar a month or pay $5 a month and get me to answer some of your questions, which is what I’m going to do right now.[00:01:19] So, Allen asks here goes, this is a first question from Allen. Allen, thank you very much. As a fairly laid back and sometimes quite taciturn person, that’s a good combination. I like it. Laid back and taciturn. I just had to think about that. Okay. That’s a fairly laid back and sometimes quite taciturn person, I find it difficult to write dialogue for more gregarious, outgoing characters. How do you write for characters whose instincts differ dramatically from your own and still have them sound natural? So it is a fantastic question and it is something that I think writers on the whole generally struggle with this idea of how to make character voices sound distinct and unique, especially when they are not in our own natural voice. So I have been thinking about voice a lot in the last week or two, just as some students have asked me some questions and it strikes me that, are, as I’ve said often before, our voice is our voice, when it comes to writing, you will never be able to hear it. It is like your accent. Everyone else can hear your accent, but you can’t. You kind of have to be told what your voice in writing is because it’s like the fish who lives in water, but doesn’t know that water exists because they are in the water, our brains are always talking to us in our own particular voice language. So when we put our own words down on the page, when we put dialogue down on the page, it is automatically what is just in our brains all the time. And for that reason, it can read as boring or dull or all the same, and we’re not being different enough.[00:03:07] And that is worrisome. So I understand that feeling, but I don’t actually think it’s something we need to worry about it too much, because it is so easily fixed in revision. And you probably knew I would say that, but what I do with my books is I write them as the book falls out of my fingers and onto the page. And I make that sound like it is easy. It is not. A book never falls out of my fingers, but books do get typed pretty quickly by me and by a lot of other writers and we type it badly, we type it not well. Our books, no book ever comes out into a first draft without needing significant amounts of revision in order to be a good book in order to be publishable quality.[00:03:53] So, my answer for this is I don’t worry about it. I, everybody in my first draft sounds the way I sound with my voice because I have- I don’t even know who these characters are a lot of times yet I’m learning about them. I might learn that this one might want to be more chatty than I normally am. This one might be more taciturn than I usually am and I don’t worry about it. Once the first draft is done is when I start thinking about, well, sometimes it’s after the second draft, honestly, I usually make this into a pass of my own work is differentiating dialogue and on a really logical level, and Allen you’ve, you’ve shown this is we were able to ask ourselves logically using the logical, rational, revision brain we were able to ask ourselves, what does this character need to sound like? And what do they sound like now? And we can answer that question because we are good at reading we can say this character sounds just like all the other characters, but I want her to sound more gregarious, more chatter boxy. And then that becomes a pass where you can just go through your book, look just at Gloria’s dialogue and make Gloria’s dialogue more chatty than it came out in that first draft or make Diana’s dialogue more taciturn, more quiet shorter sentences, or give this person longer sentences.[00:05:21] It is such an easy thing to fix in revision that I never worry about it upfront. So if you are struggling with that, make yourself a note that that’s going to be one of your passes is a dialogue pass to make sure that your characters sound the way that they want, that you want them to. One thing that I find very useful when I’m thinking about characters’ voices, and I’m talking about characters who are not my main point of view character, for the most part, although this does apply to those two, is think about what they do. Think about how they see the world. If she is a baker, she’s going to see the world in terms of flavor and measurements and really using words that apply to her as a baker, same thing with the sailor, same thing with a tax accountant that does inform who our characters are and if you push it a little further, it’s fun to play with those ideas.[00:06:17] A tax accountant, of course, we would think they’d be buttoned up and tight and very precise and know where all the bodies are buried at all times, but what if this particular tax accountant is different and he loves numbers, he loves what he does. Right, he hates what he does. But in this part of his life over here, he is sloppier or messier or more hands off play with I think I’ve gone from voice into actual building of characters who are not our main characters, our main characters, demand rigorous exploration and rigorous thought about their character arc, the smaller characters that are moving around the board. I really have a good time playing with how they might fit into their own trope or how they might break out of it, how I can play with their language and their dialogue later, after the first draft, every once in a while, I will get a character who comes to me with their own voice. And that is always a gift. And I would say it happens one book in 10 for me. So when it does, I really, really enjoy it. So, I hope that that helped Allen. In other words, don’t worry about it until you’re in revision and then it will be easy to fix. That’s one of those easy to fix things. [00:07:34] All right, this is from Maggie. Hello, Maggie, sending you lots of love. Maggie, these are personal questions, but hopefully relatable. Number one, when you’ve ditched a whole novel you finished about a year ago because it has so many problems, but now want to jump in and salvage the basic book characters and about 20% of the writing, what would your approach be?[00:07:58] Okay. So I have done this and I have seen students do this too. I, I do it exactly the same way I approach a major revision and I believe the revision episode for this, the kind of the way I do revision, I believe it’s episode 108 of “How Do You Write?” You can listen to everything I believe about revision. What it comes down to for me is making that sentence outline of what’s in the book and then I use story structure to kind of re-outline what I want the book to be. And then if it is this big, affects, I kind of just start a brand new document and I bring in very little, I just kind of start rewriting the book. And I know that’s painful to hear that is, but you know, what you have said is that you might want to save 20% of the books. So, 80% of that is first draft. Tell yourself, oh, I know it’s painful. Tell yourself that this is a 100% first draft rewrite of this book. That’s the only thing that worked for me to salvage the book that I salvaged. I just started rewriting it every once in a while. I would go dip into the book because I knew where everything was. I had done my sentence outline I knew what was in that old book. And I could go in and grab out a paragraph or two, I honestly grabbed A lot fewer words than I thought I would, because as I wrote the book was changing all the time, so I couldn’t save all the words I thought I could, but I do treat it like a normal revision. And I go in, start with that first scene. Is it the way I want it to be? If not, write a new first draft of the first scene, keeping in mind that all of these things can change later, not holding on too tight. Sometimes when we do this kind of major, major, major, major revision we do get set in our head that this is a revision. So therefore I should be making things better. I think in this kind of major revision, it is better to have beginner’s mind, first draft mind, where you’re just doing a crappy job. You’re doing a crappy job and you’ll fix it later in revision. And that kind of gives you the freedom, the hands-off, the ability to let go and just kind of lean into this first drafting process of the play and the fun and the weirdness and how nothing fits together yet accepting all that and moving forward, I think might be really, really helpful. [00:10:17] Number two question from Maggie, a different book, advice on revising the first 10 to 20 pages when you realize the tone and pace is quite different than the rest of the book, the voice is the same. I wrote it that way to set how oppressive her, her normal life is. So there is market change by the end, but now it feels like a barrier for people to get past those first pages, which can be so important for readers/agents, et cetera. As always thank you, as always Maggie, you are welcome. I think that’s a really good and interesting question. So it is important in our books to set up the status quo. We need to see our characters in their normal life and their status quo for a while. Because we need to establish empathy for them, connection, and understanding the reader needs to understand what they’re in before the inciting incident happens at which point they decide to do something different and enter a new world. So we do need to see them in their old world in order for that to mean something to the reader. Knowing that, they could be in this really awkward, uncomfortable beginning place. There’s a couple of ways to ensure that this doesn’t bog down the reader too much and it both, both methods come down to wedding the readers’ appetite. First off you could have a very quick prologue. I, you know, a page or two, which shows your main character at a critical, interesting point in her future that you’re going to get to in the book, that shows that particular how did you put it a particular tone and pace of the rest of the book to tell it was basically guarantees the reader.[00:12:04] Look, I’m going to get to this tone and pace. We’ve got to go backwards a few steps, see our character in her status quo life. And then I’m going to get you there. Or, you can do that in a smaller way by showing your character inside that tone and pace of the rest of the book. Just for a little bit maybe as something arises, some kind of situation, which requires action in this hook at the beginning of the book show her acting that way. And again, it’s this tacit unspoken promise that you’re making to the reader. Like I’m going to come back to them and we’re going to get there I think you’re being very smart to think about it, but I also think that’s not a but, I think you’re being very smart to think about it. And I also believe that readers, even when they’re unable to explain this out loud, which is most of the time readers who are readers don’t understand this stuff, they just know what they like they understand that this is status quo and that this person is going to change. So they do, they can kind of lean into, Oh, this sucks, right? This sucks where this character is. I wonder how she’s going to get out of it. So you have a little leeway and some play there, which will allow the reader to keep reading. So, what I’m saying is I’m glad you’re thinking about it and don’t worry about it too, too much so hope about hopes. [00:13:30] And our last question is from Thoumas, Hello Thoumas. He says, what exactly is the difference between a collection of personal essays and a theme-based memoir that isn’t chronological? When I think about someone like David Sedaris, I can’t see any difference between his essays and what’s generally considered memoir. Do personal essays tend to be more cerebral or philosophical? A follow up question, am I right in assuming that if the book cover of an unknown author says essays instead of memoir, it will most probably sell less. I have a hunch that most people perceive essays to be heady and dry, but maybe I’m wrong. Thanks again. Okay, so great question. Essays have to be able to stand alone. An essay is something that you could pull out of a collection of essays, publish in a magazine. And no one would say, but what happens next? But what about his father? What about, you know, what about these loops that he opened? Every loop that you open inside an essay needs to be closed inside that essay, for the most part, there are of course exceptions to every rule. So your question is about collection of personal essays and a theme-based memoir that isn’t chronological.[00:14:47] So theme-based memoir that isn’t chronological is still telling a story and all of those scenes do not have to stand alone. Every scene in the book does not have to have a beginning and a middle and an end. You can tell you can, you can show a scene that perhaps prove something but doesn’t resolve them at something you could show a scene that opened more questions, that it answers and move around within this memoir that way. It is implied that in a memoir like that, we are going to see a character arc progression through the course of a memoir and the main character. The “I” character will have changed by the end, that has to have happened in a collection of essays that doesn’t have to have happened. Normally the change in the character occurs within the essay itself. That said, there are collections of essays that are theme based and when we arrange them inside a book, we do want to think about story structure. So even though, these essays stand-alone completely, perhaps they’re all looking at the same theme of somebody’s life perhaps or not. But at that midpoint in the collection of essays, we want a large decision. We want a large discovery revelation, something that moves our character into making a decision, something that gives them more information that they have than they had before, because readers as a whole, again, don’t know that they expect this, but we all expect something to change at the middle at the midpoint, is context shifting midpoint. And if an essay just happens to be at the beginning- of the middle of the book that shows a large change in that main character, it’s the perfect placement. At about the 70 to 80% mark of a collection of essays, we really want that to be the darkest essay. The essay in which it was the worst time where everything was lost because the human brain is used to the three X structure, or as I teach it the four X structure, but it is still the strict three X structure. And we are used to having the dark moment the dark night of the soul right there. And that’s where we want it.[00:17:07] That’s where it feels good and then we have this kind of space at the end to resolve and those are perhaps a lighter essay or essays that show the growth has manifested by the end of this collection of essays. So, I’d say as much standalone, a theme-based memoir that is not chronological, nothing has to be resolved within each chapter or scene. You will often see collections of essays that I think could be stronger because they weren’t put into story structure order. I get frustrated with those personally, I buy a lot of collections of essays. I, I would say that I think that that might be your lens that you’re using, and that people perceive essays to be heavy and dry, because there has been this explosion of extremely humorous essays that are sold in collections by the millions, you know, Samantha Irby and Roxane Gaye is coming to mind, although she’s not hilarious, but these essays standalone could be published in a magazine, they’re collected into a book. And sometimes I get frustrated reading these because I get the emotional punch, the emotional punch, the emotional punch of the next one, but I’m not getting the feeling in the places that I’m expecting. So sometimes I just put them aside. I love Samantha Irby. I think she’s one of the funniest writers writing today.[00:18:33] And I couldn’t get through her most recent collection because nothing was dragging me through when I would finish an essay, Ooh, I feel good. I could put the book down, haven’t picked it up again. I think I’m three or four essays in. So, you know, obviously I’ve got to get that more of a chance and I love her work. But it is, we’re thinking about structure even when we’re talking about collections of personal essays and what I’m saying is I think that people nowadays do have more of a space in their heart to pick up essays because they are not expecting them all to be dry and theoretical in tone. So, your mileage may vary and Thoumas, what I know about your memoir is it’s probably going to work really well in that theme-based non chronological memoir way. And if you happen to throw in some chapters that would stand alone, that would be pull outable into a magazine, great! You can publish those too, you know, self- first serial rights or whatever it is that you want to do with those and I hope that helps. I always feel like I sometimes open more questions with these questions than I answer.[00:19:40] And anyone can always ask me, what did you mean when you said that? And I’m happy to answer those questions. I’m happy to answer any questions honestly. So, thank you for listening to the mini podcast Q&A great questions y’all and I wish all of you, very, very, very happy writing. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

The post Ep. 211: How to Write Dialogue for Characters Very Unlike Yourself appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 210: Pam Rosenthal on Not Letting the Page Know You’re Afraid

Pam Rosenthal has written award-winning sexy historical romance and award-winning brainy BDSM erotica, as well as occasional essays and reviews for Salon.com, the SF Chronicle, Dearauthor.com, and Socialist Review. She stands behind the quality of her product, but confesses that her writing process has been more than a little bit fraught. Currently, she’s looking toward making peace with that process, while she continues to work with her husband and longtime creative partner at their copyediting business — not to speak of working her ass off to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic Senate.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 210 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled you’re here with me today. Today, I’m talking to the fabulous Pam Rosenthal who has a lot of great stuff to say, including on why you shouldn’t let the page know that you’re scared of it. But let me tell you a little bit about my history with Pam. I, it was probably one of my very first national RWA’s: Romance Writers of America conferences, we were in Orlando, I believe it was bloody hot. And she won the Rita. I believe for historical novel. She won the Rita. That is like winning an Oscar and say what you will about the implosion of RWA that has occurred in this last year. I am no longer a member. I’m no longer on the board. I’m all the way out, but RWA was so pivotal and so important for a lot of people in learning the business and craft of writing. And that was, we’re not even gonna get into the RWA stuff. I’ve talked about it before, but I’m at this conference, and this woman walks into our suite holding her Rita and I got to hold it. And she was so modest and self-effacing, and really, I could tell she was surprised that she had won it.[00:01:42] So, I read her book and it was astonishing. She’s such an incredible writer. If you’re looking for incredibly smart, incredibly sexy, erotic books that have true depth and meaning, and are also joyous and fun. I’m saying, go pick up a Pam Rosenthal. So I was elated to get the chance to interview her for this. So you’re going to enjoy that, now that I’ve built her up as she deserves. What’s going on around here? Well, I am happily NaNo-ing along, I am, I think about 30,000, 32,000 into this new book. And I just kind of want to talk for a moment about what a crappy first draft looks like, because I hear from students a lot that they think they are writing the crappiest first draft that has ever existed. I’m sorry, you can’t, because that is what I do really, truly what my words look like on the page are a gobbledygook mess. The one thing I do not allow myself to do is ever go back and edit or revise anything. The one exception to that is if I need help getting into writing for the day, I’ll go back and look at the previous day’s writing and kind of smooth that a little bit, you know, correct all the misspellings, put things into Italics that I had put into caps because I’m using a program that won’t allow Italics. You know, I’m generally writing on the alpha smart nowadays. So there are no Italics on that, doing that kind of thing, but otherwise, I have a whole books worth of snippets, fragments, sometimes I have a whole scene. Sometimes I have a whole really good scene, but more often I have these fragments of scenes that I don’t know what I’m going to do with. I don’t know if they’re going to fit. I allow myself to stop writing a fragment of a scene at any point. As long as I don’t go back and edit, I can do anything.[00:03:42] I generally don’t write out of order. And this is just me, when it comes to jumping ahead. But I do write out of order when it comes to jumping back, because as I’m writing forward, I often have a really good idea for something that should have happened before. And I will sketch that out. It’s not, it still counts to me as moving forward because it’s brand new words. And I don’t go back and look where in the book it should go. I just usually write in all caps, fit in somewhere. And then I write the little snippet of the scene that I see that could help me later. And then I write in all caps going back to, and then I go back to where I was. Nothing has to be pretty, nothing has to be smooth. And in fact, you’ve heard me say this a million times and I’m going to argue for it again. I think that nothing should be beautiful or smooth. The more beautiful you make your writing in a first draft, the more impossible it will B to C, that that particular scene or scenes do not fit in the book you actually end up writing. We always think we’re writing one book. It’s never true. We are writing a different book and we will not know that until after two, three, four, five revisions, then we’ll know what the book really wants to be. And if we’ve made the language beautiful, if we’ve made those scenes really strong on their own as a scene, it’s much more painful to lift them out later. [00:05:07] And indeed, sometimes it’s impossible to see that you should. It’s much easier for me if I have a bunch of crappy scenes, when I’m in revision to apply my brain to the problem at hand and see, oh yeah, that really doesn’t. That seems not doing anything for me. It’s a bunch of crap. It is very easy to put into the trash pile. So that is why I do this. That is why, why I think this is best practice for most writers, not all writers, but for most writers I’ve ever, ever dealt with this is best practice for them. Don’t make any of them pretty, until you know, it has earned its place in your book and you cannot know what kind of scene, even what kind of character, even what kind of plot belongs in your book until that big first draft is done and until your elbows deep in the second draft and making it make sense for the first time. Your first draft should not make that much sense in a lot of ways. And it is still how we do it and can still be so fun. And I just feel like this book has been kind of gift like to me in the everyday when I sit down, I’m having fun. It’s just still a good time. I have no idea what’s going on. I am headed toward the midpoint. I know what’s going to happen there. I have no idea what’s going to happen to the rest of the book. I haven’t figured it out. I have love interests. Don’t know what to do with her. Not a clue, but she’s sexy. And I’m liking that I’m writing. This is really my first time writing a gay love interest in a mainstream book. So that’s been super fun. It’s not a romance, but it has a romance in it because life has romance in it. So I dunno, I’m having a great time. [00:06:51] Are you doing NaNo? How is it going? Remember if you’re behind, don’t try to catch up. That’s oh, it’s too hard. Maybe you’ll catch up at the end of the month. And that would be great. Awesome. If you are behind though, today, just write 1,667 words. Tomorrow, aim for the same thing. Don’t try to write 8,000 words to catch up to where you should be. That kind of pressure can crush a writer and make you walk away from this book for forever. So don’t let that happen. Just write a few more words, no matter what you’ll end up at the end of November with a lot more words than you would have had, had you not attempted NaNoWriMo. And if you haven’t attempted NaNoWriMo this year, there’s always Camp NaNo. And I think April in July, those will be coming up. So that’s something, something to think about, what else is going on? Next week I will have a mini episode. I’ve got some good questions queued up. If you are a patron at the $5 level and up, please send me any questions that you might have about anything. Nothing is off limits. I mean, you can try me on that, but I, I doubt you’ll find something. Don’t try too hard, I guess. [00:07:55] Winners of CJ Cooks’ The Nesting and Becca Syme’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit are, Holly and Michelle. Thank you to everyone who entered that and the winners have been notified. Well, that’s all the business I think I have. And we’ll just jump right into the interview. Oh, speaking of the interview, I don’t know if you, if you watch on YouTube as some people do. I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s not showing my face during the interview. I actually don’t mind but zoom has decided just to record the other person and I’ve gotten a few comments about that. They actually want to see me on the video, and I, I’m sorry about that. I am not on this video. It’s just, Pam’s beautiful face and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on with zoom but the audio is all there and that is what matters.[00:08:41] So, no matter what, whether you are NaNo-ing or not NaNo-ing, I want you to take just a second right here to think about the next scene you want to write. Take a second. I’m going to give you actual time to think about this. Go. Okay. I don’t know why I closed my eyes. We’re on a podcast, but I do want you to think about that next scene you want to write, think about the next scene that you are excited to write about. If you’re in the middle of a dull spot right now, and you’re just beating your head against the rock that is your book, jump forward, or, you know, jump back and write something new that does excite you. Remember to bring the sense of play into your work. If your work is amusing you, it will amuse somebody else. And you know, really who cares about that other person right now? The job your book has for you is to amuse yourself. You are writing the book that you can’t find. The book that does not exist yet and you’re writing it because it should exist. And you’re the only one who can bring this book into existence. So please, please, please keep going. Write that next scene that just flashed into your brain in those 9 seconds that I gave you and then find me somewhere online and tell me about it. I always love to hear from you. So enjoy this interview with Pam Rosenthal and I wish you had a happy writing.[00:10:10] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:09] Alright, Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today my friend, Pam Rosenthal. Hi Pam! 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:11:14] Hi, Rachael. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:16] It’s been a long time that I haven’t seen you. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:11:18] Yeah, well, I’ve been, I’ve been missing an action from writing for really a long time, so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:25] Oh, and I love that we’re going to talk about this on the show and I’m, I’m also just so readers are aware. I am one of Pam’s biggest fan girls, so I just- I love your work. So I’m just thrilled to have you, let me give you a little bit of a bio here. Pam Rosenthal has written award-winning sexy historical romance and award-winning brainy, BDSM erotica, as well as occasional essays and reviews for Salon.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Dearauthor.com and Socialist Review. She stands behind the quality of her product, but confesses that her writing process has been more than a little bit fraught. Currently, she’s looking forward to, looking toward making peace with that process, while she continues to work with her husband and longtime creative partner at their copyediting business, not to speak of working her ass off to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic Senate. Hell yes. You have been busy, then that’s a lot of work to do be doing. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:12:24] I, yeah. You know, I actually, I called Wisconsin yesterday. Just like you did. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Yay! How did it go? 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:12:31] Well, the first couple of calls, cause you know, you do this automated you know, I, they, they could smell fear and they just coming up, you know, I didn’t know how to deal with the, with the, with the software. And then I don’t know, I put in my earplugs and I took a deep breath. And all of a sudden, I’m having this wonderful conversation with these people, you know, who sound like they’re from Fargo, right. Because you know, and one woman is a, she’s a, she’s an aspiring romance writer, and we both just said if only we could talk all afternoon, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:04] Oh that’s wonderful

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:05] It’s so fun. And, you know, and it was interesting and of course I got a couple of people who, you know, as politics, I did not agree with although I was very polite, but it was, it was good. I liked doing it. I haven’t, I mean, I’ve done, you know, phone calls and door knocking before, but I, I have to work myself up to phone calls. It’s- 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:24] I really do. Phone calls are so, so difficult, but when you’re calling in a state like Wisconsin or any of the other swing States, it feels very important. And I’ve signed up to do my next shift next weekend, too. So.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:35] I do it on Monday. I’ve signed up for Mondays. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:36] That’s awesome! Yay. Okay. So now let’s talk about your writing process. Tell us about what your writing process has been like in the past and maybe what it looks like now. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:13:48] Well, my writing, you know, I have to say, I’ve spent more of my life as a non-writing writer, as a wannabe writer, as a sometime writer, as a, than I ever- as a, as a writer who just wasn’t you know, it wasn’t working then I ever spent as a successful writer. So I have to say that, and this isn’t my process. This is my, my overview. And I’ve told this to people who say, you know, you have these gaps. And I say, yeah, you know, I listened to your show and I listened to people who are successful. And I think, wow, these people they know how to write and like, it’s a marriage, it’s a good marriage. Lot of work, it’s not always wonderful, but it has, you have skills that you learn and you employ, I’ve never done that. It’s been like affairs and a lot of pain at the end and, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:39] it’s gorgeous. Incredible smart books.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:14:41] Well, thank you for that. You know, so I just want to say, yeah, I have to, I’m going to honor that and say, yeah, that’s good. And maybe who knows how I will, you know, whether I will be able to do it in the future. I’ve been very, for, you know, when I did it well, you know what I had these times and I, you know, when I think of when I was writing Almost a Gentleman, the first romance, the first novel got published. And I, I didn’t know- I didn’t even know who did it, you know, who did the murder or whatever. And, but I, I did know, well, we were going to go to the country. Now we were going to go to the city now. Because I have this armature of skills from doing more, just general erotic writing. I know about set up. I know about sort of scenes, you know, strange and, and, and, and it making scenery and costumes and, and, and that’s, that’s what I know how to do. And, so I was able to just base it on that and figure that whoever did it was, was good enough. And just, and I wrote you know, my 800 words every morning. I got up at four and because I was working as a computer programmer and I would get to work at 9:30 or quarter to 10, which is better as late as you could get in, I’d be the last person to enter and the last person to leave. And it was a very happy thing. I had done the important work before I’d gotten to work and that was great. And then it became harder. The, you know, the books and I wasn’t prepared for the career part. The career part did me in. I thought I would, I thought like reading reviews would be easy, it wasn’t. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:24] No it can, can crush a person. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:16:25] You know, I was a, of course. I mean, because you know, my, I mean, my first published books, I was in my forties and the first published romance novels in the fifties, I’d had a whole life of thinking that what was wrong with my life was that I wasn’t a writer. And then being a writer would solve all my problems. And you know, that, that is the most poisonous thing. Being a writer doesn’t solve any problems and 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:49] It does not. And you know what, people don’t talk about that enough. I really have this feeling like on the morning that my first book was released, I would wake up and be a different person and I wasn’t. I was exactly the same person, the whole world kept going around me the way it always had. Nobody cared that I had a book out, you know, 17 people did, but, but otherwise things don’t change. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:17:14] Exactly and yeah, so that was very difficult. And then I’m not convinced why, why I wasn’t able to continue with romance, but I always had big topics and I couldn’t think of another big topic and, and, and, and romance was going in a place where you had, you know, 11 siblings and they each had their little story. And I, I don’t know. I had always disposed of all the siblings when the first book and I couldn’t think of, you know, so I, I just. Whatever, but I think really it was more like the emotional issues I honestly do. And I think, I think it was my lack of social, not social. What did they say? Emotional intelligence of not, not knowing what an incredibly tough business it was. And also not knowing that there were, you know, the part of the job was the promo- you know, it was the production and the promotion, and I didn’t know how to change off. I had a lot of reasons for not. I, I don’t know why, but, you know, so I kind of stopped and I was very sad. I mean, you know, and I’m thinking, do you get to call yourself a writer? You know, if you’re not writing? And,

Rachael Herron: [00:18:27] Yes

Pam Rosenthal: [00:18:28] and here’s why I decided that I could, because, so just this year we had this novella, the, The Rights Were Returned to Me and I thought, well, you know, could do it, put it up. Why not? And writing it, and then the rewriting part made me so incredibly happy, writing. And I thought, well, this happiness proves, I mean, I haven’t had this happiness in 10 years, so that was just glorious. And I, so, you know, it’s interesting when it came to do the promotion, I, I don’t know how to do that stuff, but I just, I put myself in places where I’m going to write a, a guest blog post. I’m going to write something, forced myself to writing and wasted all this time when I could have been sending out arcs and all these other things, because that was because I was forcing myself to write. And it was just worth every moment. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:29] That’s gorgeous. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:19:30] And it’s been lovely and yeah, yeah. So, and then it was also nice because my husband’s a terrific editor. Well, we had this, I mean, it’s only a 30,000 word story, you know, and it’s not, and we thought, well, we’ll just straighten it out. You know, it’s, it’s not, we didn’t either of us when starting felt that there was that much to do except really good. We want to get copy editing kind of perfect because we’re copy editors and we wanted to be like a kind of you know, presentation piece. And then, so we were doing all of that. And then, you know, we got all the commas and all the, you know, Oh, like there was a room where the walls were blue and then they were green, you know, all that stuff we’d fixed and Kensington press never, you know, that was fun. And then my husband’s, I remember, the first important question he asked me, why don’t you use this verb tense? And why don’t you use the past perfect? You know, he had done, it sounds fiddly. It sounds fussy. Why do you do that? And you do it all the time. You know why? And I said, because, because I started as an erotic writer and for me, verb tense, what really people think, I think that erotic writing is you just let loose. For me, it’s the most precise thing I do. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:55] Wow 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:20:56] Goes what, where to frame, if I had very difficult perceiving at the same time and where’s, you know, where’s that other arm and, you know, I mean, it’s both, you know, it’s, it’s what happens sexually is very complicated and putting it into words and putting it into point of view and making that a strong you know, making that narrative. Is w- it’s kind of, you know, it’s both a joyous thing and a challenging thing for me. It’s, it’s the craft that I have. And it started because my first writing was more kinky, and kinky sex is premeditated and narrative and people, that’s why people think it’s dirty. You know, because they think that because they think that, you know, sex should just be something that sweeps you away and you disappear and, you know, you kind of close your eyes and I like sex writing when the eyes are wide open and there’s a lot of perceiving going on

Rachael Herron: [00:21:55] Right. When you’re swept away, you’re releasing any, responsibility for it. Yeah

Pam Rosenthal: [00:22:02] So I learned a lot of that when I was doing more straightly, erotic writing, but then because, you know, there were people involved. I started to think, well, did they love each other and stuff? And that’s how I sort of got into romance. And I won and I was very fortunate. Cause that was about the year 2000 when erotic romance was a thing, I had the chops and that was rare at that time. You know, so, so that was really fun. And I got lost. What was your question?

Rachael Herron: [00:22:30] Oh no, no, I’m just going with you. This is wonderful. So now, what are you working on right now?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:22:35] Well, what I worked on, what I finished was this was just a novella, you know, men and women meet and, and, and a house. And it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, I think I was probably inspired by Last Tango in Paris, but that’s a very exploitative story and mine is not people, there’s much more of a there, the, the, the character- oh your cat,

Rachael Herron: [00:22:57] I know

Pam Rosenthal: [00:23:00] Yeah the power balance, I think, is what’s interesting about this. It isn’t this Marlon Brando and this girl basically out of her teens, it’s, you know, there there’s really a lot of back and forth. And I, you know, that, that was really fun for me. So I was writing it my- anyway, so my husband said, well, why didn’t you do this verb tense? And I had to think about it and I had to go and I, and I realized that I was right. There was something very complicated going on in that scene, but why not write what it was called? You know, just don’t take the shortcut of the verb tense. So that kind of 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:35] How cool

Pam Rosenthal: [00:23:36] And then he started to say things like, you know, I don’t think this character would have said something this here and maybe, and what I learned. And it was interesting cause there’s a kind of kinky scene. And at that point he said, you know, I’m not even going over this because you you’ve got you, you have the timing so down for that, you know, but afterwards, what are they thinking? I don’t think you’re so clear about that. And I started to think, you know what, it’s interesting. I thought that I was bringing all these erotic chops to romance writing, but in fact, I had more to learn about romance writing. That was what I learned from this. And that was very, very exciting to me, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:20] It’s so cool. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:24:21] And so I wound up working very hard on the scenes where people were saying what they felt. And I, I, I got kind of humbled by that. Actually, it was pretty interesting and also pretty thrilling. And it was pretty thrilling to find that there were things that, because I hadn’t gone deeply enough. I didn’t understand that they were puzzle pieces that could lock in. And when I, when I got that was so thrilling. So I had all of those writing pleasures that I hadn’t had in so many years that the story was wiser than I was?

Rachael Herron: [00:25:00] Yes. Yes. Because you learned from it.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:25:04] Yeah. So it was, it was very, very, very cool. And whether I don’t know if I have an innate to write a whole book, a book, you know, I have some ideas and I’m not saying never say never. I don’t know. I mean also because it was interesting, but you know, I was a slow writer. I wrote these, you know, they were a little too literary for the field. I mean, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:32] Perhaps that’s why I love them so much. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:25:34] You know, we’re a little niche they had and I’ve had such, I have almost, I mean, I’ve had people say some horrible stuff about my writing, but people who have gotten it so profoundly that you know, it was wonderful like when I, I wrote some people for blurbs for this, you know, self-published thing and people were pointing to the new sentences and saying, I liked that, and you know what that, you know, what that. Yeah, that makes you feel like, oh my God, mission accomplished people, message has, you know, re-

Rachael Herron: [00:26:08] It worked.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:09] Yeah, you know, and so I have no idea. I mean, I know that I’d like to write, I do feel that I might have something to say, just sort of critical writing about the relationship between emotional and or, 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:26] I would love to see that

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:28] And you know, I’m going to do some blog posts and you know, but they, and one of them talks a little about that. And one of them talks about other people’s writings. That’s the one for Dear Author. I had flushed frankly, that I could promote my book. And they said, no, if you get, you get a blog post on this thing, you got to really write critically about other stuff, other people. So I read a whole bunch of new people. I mean, I read, do you ever read, have you ever read Mary Baylor?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:54] No, but I’ve heard very good things. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:26:56] She’s, you know, I always thought she was just this ladylike Regency writer

Rachael Herron: [00:26:59] That’s what I thought too.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:27:00] Older than I am, but in fact, she writes she’s and, and starting in the early nineties, she was writing incredibly unabashedly, sexually explicit stuff in such a ladylike way that I never got it, but now I get it. And I’m fascinated by her 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:20] Oh that’s so cool

Pam Rosenthal: [00:27:21] and written, like, I don’t know, a hundred books. I mean, you know, starting with like little Harlequins or whatever, I mean, but I- I’m, I’m kind of, she’s a little bit of an obsession with me now. I’m feeling a lot humbled by, there are things in romance that I didn’t get because I was very proud of what I uniquely was bringing to it, but not, I didn’t see that there were just things buried in it that are not buried, but that other people took for granted that I’m not taking for granted so much anymore. So it’s pretty interesting that I’m- I find myself more committed to romance than I would have thought. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:59] That’s beautiful. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:28:00] It’s, it’s interesting. Yeah. Well also, because, you know, starting with the 26th, so I was, well, let me just go back. You know, I was so depressed. I stopped writing in about 2011. There was, I wrote something horrible that I won’t really, my agent sent it everywhere and everybody was willing to read it and everybody hated it. I mean it

Rachael Herron: [00:28:21] Oh that’s frustrating. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:28:23] Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t good. It was very angry. I mean, I could see that now and I kind of- I got into time, time into knots with my own thing and I, and I don’t know whatever. So I stopped and you know that, and there was just a couple of miserable years and people died that I knew and people got sick and you know, it was the bad things. My husband was an independent book seller and yeah, it, he, his bookstore died in this you know, e-book climate, and that was this. And, you know, so, and then in, and then after the election, I stopped worrying because all of a sudden I had, I was reading all this genre fiction just to stay alive well, to get to essentially, because for the first time in my life, I needed happy endings because I’m not, I’m not- I’m not confident that we have a happy ending. And so, I, I, it was, I read long series. I mean, you know, things that I knew would work, you know, things that would work out and I have a few just incredible comfort and happy and admired series that I love. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:43] Ooh. I might ask you to share those with us in the, in the book section.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:29:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, I know, I mean, I have a very small area of expertise and it just has to do with like, what, what. Average people know about sex and love, only I think I can write about it, you know, and I don’t know anything else. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:08] That is not an average talent. That is not a talent motion you have. Speaking of that, can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:30:16] Well the craft tip, it goes along with that, you know, this is the thing I think about. I once saw this interview with Meryl Share and Share said, this is after she was in Silkwood with Meryl Streep. And she said, I asked, you know, she was a new actress, said, well, you’re your Meryl Streep. Tell me how to act. And Meryl Streep said, I’ll tell you one thing that when you, when I’m acting, you know, in your you’re just responding, you have to act even harder when you’re just listening to me talk, that’s when the acting chops really come in. And I feel like when I write sex, I need to be thinking about the other. It needs to be that they’re really talking about philosophy. And when I talk about, you know, what’s going on, it’s there needs to be a sexual vibe in the background all the time. And I, I’m not a great plotter, but I think I’m a good inter weaver of those two modes. And that’s kind of that’s I think the craft tip and the other craft tip probably you know, I do crossword puzzles. My husband was learning how to do them. And the Saturday New York times is really hard. No, you can’t do that. And I said, you can’t let it know you’re afraid of it. And I, and I, you can’t let the page know you’re afraid of it. I still. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:36] So true!

Pam Rosenthal: [00:31:37] You know, it’s like that, that sometimes if you want to say, you have to say it, you don’t know why you’re saying it, you know, and maybe it’ll go. But so those, those were the craft too, you know, and then you have to just kill your darlings. Like you have to put it all down and then you have to kill it and, you know, and you just. It all comes down to bravery for me I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:02] Oh, I love that. It really does come down to bravery and some days we have it and some days we don’t and some days we can only fake it. I think. Kind of like not showing the page that you’re afraid of it. You may maybe afraid, but you’re faking that you’re not afraid and you’re going to put down some terrible words, fix them later. Oh, I love that. Can you, Oh, so what a thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:32:23] What thing in my life. You know that I actu- Well, I mean, it’s surprising. I mean, I was surprised that I became an erotic writer, you know, I mean, everybody who knew me was surprised and you know, that, that I- What, what thing in my life? and then of course the partnership, this incredible partnership that I have. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] Yeah. Tell me more about that.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:32:58] It’s, well it’s, he’s it it’s he was a bookseller for many years and one day he comes home with Robert Darden’s book The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. And it’s a book about well it’s interesting because before the revolution they smuggled in, not they smuggled in Rousseau and Voltaire and stuff like that from province and countries. And they also smuggled in smart. And they call them all philosophical books. And this was so here I wasn’t erotic writer and he was bookseller. And, you know, we were like, we, we caused the French revolution and I wrote, essentially, I mean, in, in, in the book, the first book, the, the guy was the, the books seller was really my, my heroine, the Bookseller’s daughter’s favorite erotic writer in disguise because he was really the second son that centered the meanest Duke and profiles. Of course. You know, it’s I, what surprises me? I mean, the whole thing about body and mind. I mean, the phrase, the body mind problem pretty much. I’ve been surprised my whole life about these involuntary responses that my body has, and I really write to try to explain them and you know and that that’s being- I keep wondering if I’d study, if I’d study, I need something with it, with a topic, you know, if I hadn’t been an English major, would I know what I write about something I knew. Yeah. And a little bit, I mean, I’ve, I’ve written some stuff about software and about how that works when, because that’s what I was doing for a while so, but, but mostly I’ve just, I’ve read, my impetus is to write about what confuses me, why do I feel that way? You know? And, and, and I just got to put it in the words of characters to discuss it, you know? And so, yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:16] I think that’s our super power as writers is being able to figure out what we think and know and believe by going to the page and figuring it out. I wouldn’t be able to come up with the things I know if I wasn’t writing them out in some way or another. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:35:30] It’s, it’s really a way of knowing. It’s interesting, you know, and I, I was having this conversation with my therapist and my thera- and I said, you know, and it’s interesting. I said, there’s plenty of things I know about other aspects of my life. But when I talk to you about it, it has a weight and a reality that it didn’t have before. And it’s another mode of, of knowing. And I’m thinking you could divide life into so many modes of knowing they’re probably athletes who don’t know something until their body knows it. Or there are scientists who know it because they, they feel the experimental procedure, you know. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:10] They test it. Yeah. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:36:11] And, and, and fiction writing or any kind of writing for me is, is, gosh, I know that, you know, now I know, I didn’t know it before. And you know all that stuff about the unexamined life. I mean, there you go. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:27] yeah, there is not much of my life that is unexamined, unfortunately, I tend to be a Naval gazer you know, but that’s how I learn. Okay. So what is the best book that you’ve read recently? And you might want to tell us about any of these serries.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:36:37] I’m going to do three. So I will know Mary Bayleigh, you know, I probably read like. 20 of her books, because I feel like I have a lot to learn from this person who I would have thought was totally opposite from me, which is very, it’s kind of like the best literary fiction book I’ve read in a long time. I’ve probably read it more than a year ago, but it kind of turned my life around. It’s called Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:02] I love Ronnie Doyle, but I haven’t read that one. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:37:04] I haven’t read a lot of Roddy Doyle. This is, she wrote a, he wrote a book called A Woman Who Walks into Walls. Yes. well, this is the, and I haven’t read that although I read a short port in the new Yorker and it was very hard to read about a very abused wife. Well, this is the next chapter. The, the husband has been arrested. I mean, he was in a stupid 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:29] Fantastic

Pam Rosenthal: [00:37:30] She’s, she’s not an alcoholic. She’s working now to be a non-alcoholic and she’s had a whole life of being an alcoholic and did hard stuff to her grown up kids, and she’s a house cleaner and it’s just a book about saying, okay, how do you build a life just, and it’s got the most amazing close- I don’t know how he did the things he did with point of view and stuff like that. All I know is that she’s got a knee problem or a back problem. I forget what it is. And it is the realist, knee and back problem. And it just goes through the pros. I mean, it’s this very close pros and, and it was when I was particularly miserable at night. And it just asked questions about how do you, how do you make a life? And I just think it’s a wonderful book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:19] And look, what’s happened since then. Like, you’re, you’re now you’re doing this now you’re doing the novela and you know, 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:38:25] Yeah. I mean but really, you know, that it was nice. It was nice that the novella came, it was nice that I found things and it’s a, like, I was surprised it took me a year just to find a cover I liked. Not big on big chests and big dresses. And I found an illustration the night. I kind of like it and yeah, so that was good. Yeah. So I’m very happy about that. I just feel like, I want to think about these nice things I, you know, it’s and, and hopefully do some writing. I don’t know, but I do 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:58] You did say that you were going to tell me three books.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:39:00] I got them. It’s just such a great book. The warmth of Other Son’s by Isabel Wilkerson. Oh, I don’t know what that is. It’s, it’s a, epic huge nonfiction book about the migration from the South, the black migration from the South to the North in the first part of the 20th century. It’s, I don’t, it just recasts American history. It’s the America I knew, knew, but didn’t know it’s, it’s huge and it’s, you know, like so many other people I’m having to relearn American history. This is the most gorgeously written, just big. It was hard to read, it took me several months. Cause I would put it, you know, people would move into a neighborhood and then it would get, because they were black, their house would get burned down or terrible events. I mean, it’s a lot, but it was. It’s a very big and very beautifully told story. And she’s got a new book called Cast, where she, it’s more theoretical. She talks about the African-Americans in, in, in, in this country, Nazi, Germany, and the Indian cast system and draws all of these, draws these, these parallels and makes it, I honestly don’t know where it’s going to go. I, I stopped reading about two weeks ago because I came across a passage that was so hard for me. She talked about the, the, the Nazis, having, you know, very specifically, studied American rape Jim Crow, racial law. And, but there were parts of American Jim Crow racial law that they felt were too cool. To be, be inadequately,

Rachael Herron: [00:41:01] Qualm

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:02] Yes. And I had just stopped, you know, because I’ve grown up with the whole cost obviously, and I just had to readjust everything for them.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:13] It sounds like such an important read, 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:17] She’s such a brilliant writer. She’s, she’s absolutely. I mean, it’s fluid and gorgeous and devastating, but the one from Other Sons, I, I that’s the one to start with that, it’s just amazing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:31] Speaking of books. Will you tell us about your novella please, and where we can find it and you?

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:35] a house East of regions street

Rachael Herron: [00:41:39] Oh, I like that. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:41:40] Yeah. You know it well, because I live in San Francisco, I think about you know, real estate politics a lot. And this is, you know, this was when Region Street was being built and, the Prince region, you know, was, and, and, and, and changing London property values actually, and certain neighborhoods were going to be no longer posh neighborhoods, but it’s a man and a woman both wanna buy the same house. And, you know, obviously it’s just set of erotic encounters and there isn’t a Duke to be seen. He’s an ex-sailor and she’s an ex-prostitute.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:16] Oh lovely.

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:17] It’s I, I, I, you know, it’s, but it’s a Regency, it’s definitely a Regency and it’s pretty sexy. 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:24] I cannot wait to read it. I really cannot. I am just, I think you were one of the first, when I was getting into romance, I was reading widely and reading a lot of the authors that everybody was telling me to read, because I was trying to learn about this genre. And I remember when I found you, I was just like, this is what I want. This is she’s writing for me. This is my jam. And I’ve pushed your books onto so many people. There’s, they’re incredible. Where can we find you online? 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:54] PamRosenthal.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:56] Perfect. 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:42:54] And @PamRosenthal on Twitter. Not very hard, and Pam Rosenthal on Facebook (MollyWeatherfield) I mean, I’ve never come up with any of these 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:08] It’s better that way 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:43:09] Names and I, I now have a GoodReads page as well. So your basics and yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:17] Well, I, I’m going to encourage my listeners to go out and buy this immediately because 

Pam Rosenthal: [00:43:21] Oh thank you so much

Rachael Herron: [00:43:22] You’re welcome! Thank you for being on the show and it is lovely to see you. It is, it is heart good for me. Thank you. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.

The post Ep. 210: Pam Rosenthal on Not Letting the Page Know You’re Afraid appeared first on R. H. HERRON.