Rachael Herron's Blog, page 11

Ep. 209: Matt Haig on Literally Writing the Multiverse

Matt Haig is the author of the internationally bestselling memoir Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet, along with six novels, including How To Stop Time, and several award-winning children’s books. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and his brand new book is The Midnight Library. 

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. 

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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.

[00:16:00] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #209 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I am thrilled you are here. Today, I get to talk with the amazing Matt Haig about his new book, The Midnight Library, which I fell head over heels in love with. It is about books and libraries and the multi-verse, it’s got a little bit of everything and he writes with humor and kindness, and I just love his work and it was delightful to talk to him. So that is coming up. You have that to look forward to. [00:52:00] What is going on around here? Well, for the first time in many years, I am still ahead in NaNoWriMo national novel writing month. It is the 12th of November as I record this and I’m a couple of thousand head, this doesn’t happen. This doesn’t happen to me. Usually by now, I am three or four days behind and I kind of do the whole giving up thing that I have talked about in the past, saying, well, I can’t get 6,000 words a day. I guess I lost NaNo. This month though, I went into it with the intention of every day is a new day, every day, 1667 words. Again, that’s my goal. I tend to write books quickly, but not usually my books take about two to three months to write not one month and right now, actually I am taking two months to write a book. My goal is to be done by the end of December. However, I’m going to win NaNo on the way that’s one of my goalposts is winning NaNo with 50,000 words. And I, I honestly tried to remember and I meant to pull it up and then I forgot. I can’t remember if I talked about my alpha smart last week. But you know what, if I did, I can talk about it again. An alpha smart, is basically just a keyboard. It is a keystroke emulator. So it’s a, the big plastic keyboard that looks like one of those, you know, TRS eighties that we had in the eighties, I guess, I guess it was eighties, maybe early nineties. I can’t remember. That we would plunk on and it looks like you should be printing it out on dot metric paper. But what it does is you type on it. You can’t do anything else. There’s no internet, there’s no nothing. You can just type and see four lines at once it runs on AA batteries, it lasts forever.[00:2:38] And then when you’re done typing, whatever it is, you’re typing, you just hook it up to your computer and you hit send, and then it types it for you. Kind of like a player piano. You get to watch your words on roll across the screen. And while it types quickly, it still takes, you know, 5 or 10 minutes to download what you’re doing. So you got to walk away from your work and, and it feels good to walk back and say, how many words did I get? Oh my God, I got 2,400 words in an hour. That’s fantastic. So, the alpha smart has been helping me immensely. I have set up a NaNo routine, which I haven’t done in a long time. And it’s a little bit new to me because the office part is due to me. It’s a Neo too, for those of you curious they don’t make them anymore, but you can get them on eBay.  [00:3:23] I go to my little desk right here, the desk that is not my work desk that I’m sitting at right now. It’s just a 90 degree turn from where I am, but I get to look out to the street. I light a candle. I put my headphones in. I listened to calm and soothing jazz, do not mock me. It works. And I’ve been playing with this book. I’ve just been playing every day that I started to not enjoy the writing, I’ve back up and I say, okay, what’s fun. What is fun? How can I throw something into the mix here that goes along with her character arc, but ups the stakes, I need more high jinx. I need more fun, and surprise, and excitement. And it’s working. It’s, I’m really, really having a good time playing with this book. So that has just been a joy. It has been a long time since I worked on a first draft. I’ve been revising for the last seven or eight months, I think on, a couple of different books. So this is, this is fun. I’m enjoying this first draft. And I just wanted to share that with you. I hope that if you are doing NaNo, if you are behind throw out the behind number. Today, you need to get 1,667 words, and tomorrow 1,667 words. And if you’re short at the end of NaNo, you can either say, oh my gosh, I have 40,000 words. I’m an amazing person. Or if you want to win, you can sit down and have a terrible day of writing, terrible words and get 10 or 15,000 words. You can do that too. Me, if I miss it, I will just take that as a miss and, and a good number of words, but I don’t think I’m going to miss it. I think I’m going to make it.[00:04:59] Nothing else really going on around here. So I will stop this update. I am just happy with how writing is going, and I hope that you are too. I hope that you come some place and tell me all about it. And next week I will do the drawing for the two books I talked about last week. I’m giving away, if you would like to enter to win either of those two books, CJ Cooke’s The Nesting or Becca Syme’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. You can go to RachaelHerron.com/Win and sign up there. So, I’m extending that for a week. So happy writing. Come find me. Tell me how your writing is going. And thank you for listening. Please enjoy this interview. [00:05:40] Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:21] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show today, Matt Haig. Matt, hello! 

Matt Haig: [00:06:26] Hello, Rachael. Thank you for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:28] I’m thrilled to have you. I loved this new book of yours. Loved it, loved it. And I want to talk about that and your process of writing, but I want to give you a little introduction first. Matt Haig is the author of the internationally bestselling memoir Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet, along with six novels, including How to Stop Time and several award-winning children’s books. His work has been translated into 30 languages and his brand new book is The Midnight Library. I want to tell you a tiny bit of a story, Matt, for some reason, I got your book on net galley from our shared publisher and, and then I just forgot about it. And I realized two days ago that we had this interview coming up and I thought, oh gosh, I better dip into that book, but it’s a lib- it’s a book about libraries. And I just finished that beautiful book about libraries. And I don’t want to read another book about libraries and I realized I’d accidentally read yours, a month ago when I first got it. And it had it just seared in my brain. And for some reason I didn’t put the title with your name together. And it’s so good. It’s so fun. And I want to talk about this whole multi-verse idea, but first of all, can you tell us a little bit about your process and how you get all this writing done? Where, where, and when.

Matt Haig: [00:07:41] Well, yeah, I’m, you know, I’m not really a writer with a very predictable routine. It really fluctuates. I have months of procrastination, trying to form ideas, writer’s block, all of that stuff, staring at a blank word documents and not getting anywhere. And then at the other end of the scale, when I’ve got the idea, when I’m halfway through the novel, you know, seven days a week, all waking hours. I’ll just be there just typing away. So it’s kind of like a, kind of bipolar existence of one extreme to the other. And, I, you know, I sometimes think I need to have more of a sort of a rigid routine, but I actually think it’s kind of the only way I can work because I kind of need that period of procrastination. And I’m feeling like I’m unproductive limit. I’m not actually unproductive, but we’re so conditioned to think that unless we’re actively doing or physically creating in that moment, but it’s kind of wasted time and we still feel that in our lives generally, but certainly in our working lives. And to be a writer I feel like, you know, so much of writing happens when you’re not actually writing, when you’re just sort of like walking or you’re, you know, walking the dog or you’re out with your friends or you’re out in the garden or whatever you’re doing. And, yeah. I mean, so actually for me, when I’m actually stuck with my writing, I rather than just a plow through, I, I feel like the best thing I can do is to just sort of step away and do something else. And very often the biggest breakthroughs within a novel or a story happen when you’re not actually at your laptop, when you’re not in your word document, writing away 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:29] often when you’re not thinking about it at all, at all, at all.

Matt Haig: [00:09:33] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:09:33] Just- 

Matt Haig: [00:09:34] At all. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:34] it lands on you full. Yeah 

Matt Haig: [00:09:36] Oh, that’s lovely. Yeah. The loveliest moment. I mean, it’s lovely in one sense, it’s frustrating that you can’t, you can’t ever, by definition, you can’t create those moments, but what you can do, you can switch off. And sometimes I feel like I don’t want to get to sort of pretentiously psychological or philosophical, but I- I’m, I’m a great fan of Young. You know, rather than Freud, I mean into Young. And in, in, in the red book, which was only sort of like published this century, because it’s all his scribblings from his psychotic episode, he writes about the spirit of the times, and the spirit of the depths. Being the two side of human nature. By the spirit of the times, he meant being so plugged into politics and what’s happening in the world and the world around you and the external stuff and the spirit of the depths is a sort of deeper existential human truth of view. And I feel like nowadays we’re so tilting towards the spirit of the times. And we’re so lost in the spirit of times, whether it’s like the latest American presidential debate or whether it’s you know, Coronavirus or whatever catastrophe, there’s so much to distract us in, in this kind of “hell-scape” that we, we, we feel we’re in, that we’re fed through Twitter and rolling news and all of that. And which yeah, we have to engage with. I’m not saying we don’t have to engage with that. We obviously have to engage. We have to get angry. We have to get organized about the world and stuff, but at the same time, we shouldn’t neglect another truth, which is the sort of inner truth of ourselves and the sort of what he called the spirit of the depths which you know, I’m quite into, as an idea. And he said, he thought, if you tilt too far one way or another, you end up with neuroses and going a bit mad. And I felt like collectively we’re so plugged into the spirit of the times. There’s a kind of collective madness is happening from all the world, BS that we’re, we’re surrounded by. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:38] So then, if you’re, how do you honor the spirit of the depths in yourself? On a daily basis if you’re not actually actively deeply in a book. 

Matt Haig: [00:11:47] Well, books are one way, to do, if you’re reading a book, you know, I actually sort of like to step back and sort of meditate, I feel like books now are probably more valuable than ever in terms of giving you that sort of meditative space, where they’re interactive in a very deep sense, but they’re not interactive in the sense that you, you feel obliged to give them a Facebook Like or,

Rachael Herron: [00:12:09] It’s really interesting that you say that though. I agree completely. And I’ve been reading some rather heavy stuff lately and, and I find myself with a reaction when reading it, that I need to do something with that information. I should probably highlight it. I should probably copy it onto a card. I should probably share it 

Matt Haig: [00:12:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:26] with data. And I think that’s the spirit of the time affecting the spirit of the deep, instead of just reading, taking in and thinking. You know, 

Matt Haig: [00:12:25] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:12:26] the, the spirit to move is so present. 

Matt Haig: [00:12:38] Yes, absolutely. And I, I hate that about myself. Like when, when I, when I have a thought and I can’t just let it be a thought and I’m trying to shape the thought into a tweet in my head. Like- 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:51] Yes, there’s nothing- I have done this during yoga. I have done this during meditation. I actually took myself off Twitter for about six months to see if I could break that thought cycle. It wasn’t anything about the time I was spending. I wasn’t spending too much time, but my brain forming tweets around my life was unacceptable and it actually did break it.

Matt Haig: [00:13:10] Yeah. Oh, that’s good. Yeah, I’m learning. I mean, what I’m doing now, prompted by my partner is to actually have like Sundays completely devoid of screens, not TV screens. I watched, like we watched with the kids, we watched some like it hot on Sunday and we watched an old classic movie or something, but to switch off from, you know, phones and laptops and emails and, and they’re designed to be so addictive and to play with our sense of guilt. I think like, for instance, like, you know, the fact that people can see when they’ve seen a message. I thought you feel like you have to respond to that message or you’re a bad person, but to actually have freedom to not get back to emails, to not get back to text messages to just, you know, I, I’m now religious- because I’m someone who finds balance hard unless I sort of like set a day in my calendar and say write, and some days I don’t do it at all. You know, cause if I say I’ll just do 20 minutes it ends up being two hours. So if I just say write, I’m not doing that at all. I find that easier than just having 20 minutes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:21] I love that. I want to try that someday. Maybe not this week. 

Matt Haig: [00:14:24] It’s a scroll free Sunday. Well, I know, I know there’s always a reason though. There’s always a reason. There’s always seems to be a, the news seems to be getting exponentially bigger. You know, it’s always something. And I suppose, like, with you in California, you’re thinking, well, I need to, I need to be plugged in because I need to be knowing about wildfires. I need to be knowing about this, that the other and 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:29] Can I open the windows today? 

Matt Haig: [00:15:34] Can I open the window? Yeah. Has the zombie apocalypse happens yet? Are we there? Yeah, so it is, it’s, it’s a, it’s an addictive kind of world we’re in and we’re all trying to make it better, but we all have a sense that maybe, maybe we’re just contributing to, to it in our own way, you know, I never, Twitter’s the thing I’m really ambiguous about because I’ve spent so much time vending on Twitter, venting about politics, venting about personal life, venting about mental health. You always have the underlying suspicion that in trying to make it better, are you actually making it better? Are you contributing to the noise divisiveness? I don’t know. So yeah, more spirit of the depths. That’s what I’m sharing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:29] And more spirit of the depths. Amen. Amen. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Matt Haig: [00:15:34] Biggest challenge. Well, I have a lot, I think indecisiveness. I’m I, I don’t really get proper writer’s block as such. I’ve always got something to write. I just don’t know if it’s any good or if that’s the idea I should be choosing. So I found my biggest challenge is having that barometer of knowing this is a story I should be writing. So I’ll have a lot of ideas in my head about all, obviously be a varying quality of varying interest if I wrote them. But I have, I- I’m quite bad in the initial stages of working out, which is the one that’s going to have legs, which is the one that’s going to be the most interesting. And so I actually have to write quite a chunk of it and ended up often abandoning quite a lot of writing because until I’ve written it, I don’t know. So I wish I was a bit better at that. So my- yeah, about challenging actually knowing what’s going to resonate initially before writing. I think I’m quite good as it goes on. I’m quite sort of self-critical and I, I, you know, that famous sort of polished detective I’m quite good at knowing when things aren’t working and I’m not shy to sort of scrap things or abandoned things or chop a chapter. I, I’m not scared of, you know, I don’t get too precious about it, but it’s just that, that initial thing of having different ideas and knowing which direction to go at the start is it takes me frustratingly long to get there as it did with The Midnight Library and my previous novel, had sometimes it takes me a while to go

Rachael Herron: [00:17:05] What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing then? 

Matt Haig: [00:17:09] Biggest joy actually is when you’ve got the idea and you are on the first draft and you are literally the only person who has read your work and that is the thing, but that, that is pure writing to me. And that’s the aspect of writing. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve never have had a novel published in your life or whether you’re Stephen King, that is writing. You know, that aspect every writer has that you know, the stuff outside it and stuff to do in a publication, that’s a bit that fluctuates in degrees and that’s where, how popular you are or what your Goodreads ranking is and all of that. But the actual act of writing itself, I think you have to keep a love for that, for that first draft feeling when it’s flowing well. Obviously there’s times you just want to bang your head against the wall. It’s frustrating. But when you, when you kind of, when things are going right or when you surprise yourself, like you’ve imagined something you haven’t planned to imagine, but you’re just taking a left turn here or something. I think, I think that’s the moment where it feels like a really sort of fun activity, almost like a sport, I guess, sort of fishing and you’re finding new stuff that you didn’t have before, you know. I, I’m a bad editor in terms of when the editors involved and maybe you get the notes in and I really respect my editor. My editor’s very wise person and gives me good notes. But I find that process, it feels really like work and it feels like you’ve got a job in that that sense, but there’s moments in a, in a good first draft where it doesn’t feel like work and you’re sort of really enjoying it. And you almost can get into like a little trance state when you’re lost in your own daydreams. And, and that’s the stuff that always stays good. You know, you, you get, you know, a little bit as you get a little bit more well-read and a bit more well-known, I think the neuroses ramp up a little bit around publication and you think, well, what are you going to say? And, Oh, that’s amazing. I’m going to get a New York Times book review, but then you’re just like, well, what they’re going to say, this could be devastating and so all those stupid things that shouldn’t be problems, which are privileges, but, but you turned them into problems and yeah, but the actual the calming thing for me, and actually, the way I cope with having a book come out and be criticized or not criticized or whatever it is, the way I cope with that reaction, which is they’re all on set. Even the good stuff is unsettling. That’s what, that’s what I’ve discovered about my mind. I find even, even praise can be unsettling because you get too lost in that outer, you know, going back to the young you’re too plugged into the art. So the way to sort of calm and center yourself is to just sort of hide away and start writing something new. I think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Hiding away in the writing is really wonderful. And I feel like writers have this gift that we’ve been giving- given during this pandemic. They do have a place to go and lose ourselves in a really, really deep way. Can you share a craft tip of any sort on writing?

Matt Haig: [00:20:00] Craft tip

Rachael Herron: [00:20:01] Yes!

Matt Haig: [00:20:04] Right. Okay. Craft tip. Well, this is possibly, you know, it’s a very subjective craft tip, but I, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:13] The best kind.

Matt Haig: [00:20:14] Well, I am into breaking certain rules and the rule, you know, a lot of unwritten rules cause books look a certain way often. And, you know, in terms of like chapter lengths, a chapter length tends to be in the average novel, I don’t know between 10 and 20 pages and that’s sort of like a given and I sometimes do that, but sometimes I like to actually see a book and the page as a visual thing, as well as something you just read, I’m quite a visual person. I don’t actually see it as a visual thing. So I actually kind of like short chapters. So what I did with my very first number, when it wasn’t working. I, it was about 12 chapters long. I broke it up into something like 120 chapters. I scattered it and playing about with that and seeing certain paragraphs as, as sort of standard individual things. Really helped me understands what I’m doing. So I think my main craft tip is just kind of forget, in some ways that books have been written before. And you’ve got this story to tell. With the English language and you’re, you’re, you’re forgetting in, in, in, in some sense you’re forgetting the other books exist and you’re thinking, how best do I tell this particular story? And you forget about conventions in terms of how long chapters have to be, or how long paragraphs have to be or how you, you just communicate it. And it doesn’t mean you have to be sort of like overly pretentious or do something incredibly artistic or write poems halfway through the page or anything like that. It’s just, I think it can help clear the communication if you’re, if you’re, you know, uniquely doing it as you, how you want to communicate. And so, and also it’s a trick. I think, cause we all like to feel that we’re turning through the pages fast and the one psychological trick you can make that happen. If you’ve got a lot of white space in your book, they are going like that. They are turning the pages very fast. And it’s a nice feeling because I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that feeling of going to sleep halfway through a chapter ending, you know, I like that feeling of finishing a chapter 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:27] See and I’m, I’m the anomaly but I love to stop right when I’m really enjoying something, I’ll stop in the middle of a sentence during the crisis of a book and put it down and say, Ooh, I’m gonna do that later. 

Matt Haig: [00:22:38] Okay. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:28] No one understands.

Matt Haig: [00:22:39] So that’s like, yeah, no, I get that as well. It’s like, you know, about Keat’s quote about the Unkissed Lips. It’s kind of like that moment of like to come. Yeah, I get that too. I get that too. But, I saw a program once, I can’t remember what it was, but it talks about the difference in skyscrapers between New York and Chicago. And it said that like in New York, the skyscrapers were all sort of crammed up together in Midtown. It’s very sort of cramped together, whereas in Chicago, the space around the skyscrapers and, and because the space around the skyscraper’s, you actually pay more attention to the individual structure of the skyscraper become more iconic. So, I think maybe an introvert, because my dad’s an architect or something, but I like the idea of a chapter being right. Like you can create space around it visually and you actually draw more attention. So you can take a line out of a chapter and you wouldn’t notice it in a chapter. But if you, if you turn that line into an entire page on a page venue, you’re suddenly, your attention is drawn to that. So I think there was a line somewhere in the book. And I don’t break up my books like that until the end, but I sometimes think, Oh, if I, if a line comes at a key moment, I think I’ll just turn that line and just put it on its own page and then yeah, so it’s a lot of that stuff, but yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:57] I love that

Matt Haig: [00:23:58] it’s not, it’s not, it’s definitely not right for every book, but for me, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:00] But for playing. Yeah. 

Matt Haig: [00:24:02] Like being playful. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:03] I love that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Matt Haig: [00:24:10] Oh, okay. Well, the realization, I don’t know if this is the right answer to this, but one thing that changed for me as a writer is I used to have a writing room and then now I don’t have a writing room. I like literally write on my sofa and write with my laptop. And I actually think I write better and more productively, now I don’t have a writing room.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:38] Why? Why is that?

Matt Haig: [00:24:40] I don’t know. And again, this is very subjective. This is very me, this is not the universal. I think it’s because as soon as I have a writing room and it’s an office and it feels like it’s work, I go into work mode and I feel like for creativity, it helps to be a bit in play mode. And so if I’m on my sofa and writing, I actually like, and I’m also a writer who kind of likes a bit of background noise because I have tinnitus. So I have ringing in my ears all the time. So I- it’s not, it doesn’t, it doesn’t swap my life or anything. There’s lots of times I don’t hear it, but if it’s total silence, I’ll be aware of ringing in my ear. So I’ve got conditioned to having background noise and we’ve got kids. So there’s often a lot of background noise, but interestingly, when we bought a house here, I bought it because it had a shed in the garden and I thought I was going to be like Roald Dahl, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:32] Heck yeah

Matt Haig: [00:25:33] Who famously had had a shed and walk out to his writing shed. And that didn’t happen, and that wouldn’t happen and the trouble is, in, in a cold rainy day, when you just want to get up and be warm in your pajamas, you wouldn’t go out to the shed. And, yeah, writing on the sofa has been the thing. I think, I think you can look at my books. If you look at my early books that were written in a writing office versus the books that are written on the sofa, they’re more enjoyable, the ones that are written on the sofa, because I was probably enjoying myself.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:06] That’s fascinating. So I wonder, I wonder if you are, if you’re Uber fans who have read every single thing you’ve ever written online. 

Matt Haig: [00:26:14] Well, the ones, yeah, the ones where I was in a sort of uncomfortable chair. Well, it’s something I massively changed. I massive, I mean, I’ve, I’ve written quite a few books and a lot of sort of them are seriously unread books that no one really read but my first three books, well, the first one did okay in the UK, but then the second, third didn’t lose as well. And they were so bleak. And it’s so interesting because now if I’m criticized, as I sometimes get criticized by reviewers in the UK, they will always say the same thing. They’ll say, Oh, you know, it descends into sort of optimistic platitudes or become like a, sort of like a Facebook wall of, they always say that same thing. And I’m not actually uniquely proud of that because, well, first and foremost, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a snob about inspirational quotes. If someone can say something in a simple way, even if it feels a bit clichéd, it’s simple, clear expression to someone else that offers some comfort. I don’t, I don’t see what’s wrong with that, but also, you know, I, I, the writing that I’m ashamed of having written was when I was younger and I thought that to be a writer, you kind of had to reflect the bleakness and pessimism of the world. And, you know, I, I literally wrote a book called The Possession of Mr. Cave, which got very well reviewed. No one read it at all, but reviewers read it mean I really liked it because it was totally miserable. And literally everyone died in it. It was just a terrible, don’t read that book. And anyway, you know, about had no optimism or no sort of happy platitudes, and so they’d say, and I reached a point and I don’t know what happened in my thirties, but I thought if you’re contributing somethings of the world, why be ashamed of putting some sort of hope inside it or some optimism inside it? I’m someone who genuinely in my twenties, I nearly died because the pessimism, because I was suicidally depressed and depression gave me pessimism. And that pessimism wasn’t real. Yes, I know we live in a screwed up world, but so the voice in my head that depression was giving me was like, Oh, you will definitely be dead by the age of 25, your partner will leave you. This will happen. Nothing good will happen. Dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, that became like a sort of Fox news of the brain, which was just as beaming with sort of. Beaming with sort of tire of cycle of, of stuff. And so, in a, in a way optimism was more authentic for me, optimism was, and not only that, even if pessimism and optimism are equally inauthentic, only one of those things is useful and that’s optimism. Pessimism is not psychologically useful. So optimism, you have to, you have to have some hope. And instead, what I try and do now is take a pessimistic such situation or a person in a bad place, or a terrible situation, like a suicide, a woman between life and death or whatever. And try and then find the hope inside. And I think that’s a bit more useful. And, and I know it’s a bit weird to talk about novels having a use, but I feel like, you know, why not offer something as a human communicating to another human? That got some, 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:21] You know it’s perfect- perfect segue into the book. Will you please tell us a little bit about what the book is? Saying 

Matt Haig: [00:29:27] Yes. Sure. The Midnight Library is a book about a woman between life and death who finds herself in this infinite library. And all the books on the shelves are different versions of her life if she had lived it a different way, and she’s someone who’s full of regrets. So one of the book, which is the book of regrets reminds her of all the things and decisions she’s made that she regrets. So she now got a chance to undo those regrets and live in a different, try out these different existences with the help of a librarian; Mrs. Alum is God-like librarian and she gets to see if the grass really is greener in the life where she was an Olympic medalist of a life, where she was a rock star or a glaciologist, or owns a vineyard or whatever. So she can see, and some of those lives obviously is grass isn’t greener, some of those layers are perfectly fine, but maybe not right for her. And she has to work out the best way to live. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:20] And it is beautiful. And wonderfully written 

Matt Haig: [00:30:24] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:25] Dragged me through. Generally, I start the books and then I only finished them if they drag me through and it just dragged me through beautifully. So, what you’re exploring in this book is really the idea of multiverses, right?

Matt Haig: [00:30:39] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:30:40] Of every choice that we do not take creates an infinite number of multiverses. Do you, do you believe in that? 

Matt Haig: [00:30:47] I do, actually. I think that’s a good scientific basis for believing in that. There’s a, a book by, I think he’s American, a guy called Brian Green who wrote a book called The Hidden Reality about how all our, current scientific thinking leads to the idea that are multiverses, they might be different kinds of multiverses like there’s a uni- some people believe in universe beyond the universities and others believe that the multiverse is right inches away from us if you’ve just done a different thing. But yeah, I, I, I, I do, but I also believe that we have the power to always enter a new universe within our own timelines and the, by the things we do. And I find that a very empowering thought because it can be a bit of a sort of depressing thought to think, Oh, there’s always better lives out there, but to actually realize you’ve got the power within your life to not necessarily become a billionaire or a rock star or whatever, but to actually, you know, suddenly within the same situation, within the same people in your life to actually have a totally different outlook opponent and I think that’s very helpful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:49] What you did with your book too, in the framing of it, using the books as the device to display that, I thought was so approachable and understandable because I often think about the multiverse and get very confused and stuff, thinking, and then pick up Twitter. But it allowed me to think of it in another, in another way. It’s an infinitely branching library and it’s all hers. And I just want to say that I recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who likes books, did you have Mrs. Elm yourself? 

Matt Haig: [00:32:20] Yeah. Mrs. Elm is a bit of an amalgam, but I definitely had an English teacher who was a bit like Mrs. Elm, like who seriously got me into books or something that weren’t just things that are bad to be sort of worthwhile and do me good. But there is a, a proper thrilling life enhancing entertainment medium like cinema or whatever else it is. And yeah, she was one of those people. And, my grandmother, actually, my grandmother died when I was quite young, would often take me into the forest, you know, finding things that you’d know all about the forest. And she just seemed full of infinite wisdom. So a bit of her in that as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] I had a Mrs. Craig, my, my grade school librarian. She taught me how to crochet inside the library. It was wonderful.

Matt Haig: [00:33:03] Oh, very good. I love libraries as spaces that are more than just books. They’re important as a space, like town center libraries, they are spaces that don’t just like us as a consumer, but they like us, for us, you know, and we don’t have many of those spaces that are kind of like secular churches aren’t they.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:22] Yes

Matt Haig: [00:33:23] Aren’t just about money, and then we’re not a wallet to them. We are, you know, something beyond that. I think, one thing I think America does far better than Britain and Europe is value libraries. I think you, you really play, you know, our libraries are being decimated and underfunded and closing down and the last sort of areas that where we need to be more deprived areas. It’s very hard to find the library now. Whereas I felt like libraries certainly are still very much center of the culture of America and that’s something 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:55] the center of book culture, but they’re also turning into a, a social safety net center, as well as, as the social safety net is cut from other places, then we’re forcing these libraries to, our librarians must become social workers and mental health experts and, and all of this. And so I, 100% agree with you, but I wish we would also give some more money, always more money to libraries. Oh, I live in, you know, I mentioned in Oakland and our library system is amazing. And what I can do is I request the book I want, I’m usually the first one to request it. And that means they buy it in E-book and they send it to my Kindle and the author gets paid and I get to read it for free four days later, you know it’s, Oh, it’s the best ever. 

Matt Haig: [00:34:43] Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Unlike certainly in our country, the debate around libraries was often says, well, the internet has made it irrelevant because we can access all this information and we can answer 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:52] What about the books? 

Matt Haig: [00:34:53] What about the books? What about that four dimensional space that you can go into and the fact that it’s, it’s the kind of thing that glues a community together. Isn’t it? You’ve got a library. You have hospitals, you have a church, but you have a library at the heart of it. And yeah. So, you know, we’re not quite in the state, America’s in with leadership, but our leadership. Yeah. But we’ve had, we’ve had over 10 years of a conservative government that have been not good for culture and communities at all. So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:23] I think if, if we weren’t, if we were not collapsing over here, we’d be spending a lot of time commiserating with you. But 

Matt Haig: [00:35:27] yeah, I know

Rachael Herron: [00:35:28] but I’ll find ways.

Matt Haig: [00:35:29] so American to be absolutely the best, even after being the worst. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:36] You know it is, it’s embarrassing. All of it. All of it isn’t fair.

Matt Haig: [00:35:38] I know.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:45] Thank you so, so, so very much for doing this with me. I really appreciated talking to you. I really loved reading the book so much so that I forgot it was your book. And I didn’t want to read this other guy’s book about libraries. Because it was yours. 

Matt Haig: [00:35:56] Thank you, Rachael. It was a joy.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:57] No need for any more library books. It was beautiful.

Matt Haig: [00:36:01] That was a joy. And I hope that hopefully in some post-COVID happier future, I’ll meet you in Oakland or San Francisco and we’ll have an event and that’d be good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:09] Absolutely. That would be wonderful. Okay. Thanks man, take care!

Matt Haig: [00:36:11] Cheers, Rachael, 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. 209: Matt Haig on Literally Writing the Multiverse appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Plan to Fail Gloriously and Productively!

Photo by Kenan Reed on Unsplash

I talked about this in my writer’s email today, but I can’t stop thinking about it. (Yes, this means that you might hear some overlap if you subscribe to that list of writing encouragement. If you’d like to join that list, just go to rachaelherron.com/write.) 

LISTEN HERE:

Let’s talk about goals.

But let’s do it realistically. 

As real people, with messy and hard and beautiful and true lives. 

In January, we all get a lot of this goal talk, don’t we? And I’m as prone to falling for it as anyone else. In late December, my Instagram feed fills up with pictures of various planners because guaran-damn-teed, I’ll click on every single one. I don’t buy any of them. Nope, I’m pretty happy with the system I use—a combo of paper planner and digital journal and GoodNotes for iPad. I duplicate calendars from digital to physical and back again, because I enjoy massaging the edges of my plans, tinkering with how I’ll fill my future blemish-free hours. 

I fuck up those plans every single goddamn time. 

And that’s okay. 

On Not Setting Goals

I had an incredibly illuminating conversation with my wife the other day. I’ve always known she doesn’t set goals for herself, but I finally asked why she didn’t.

Lala said, “I don’t set goals because I miss them, and then I end up feeling like a terrible person. It’s just less painful not to set them.”

I’ve been married to her for 14 years, and while, yes, I’d known she didn’t set creative goals, I’d never known this. My eyes wide, I said, “But—but that’s the thing about personal goals! You just move them if you miss them!”

She shook her head. “But you’re not supposed to do that! That’s the whole point of goals!”

I almost fell off the couch at the realization that we looked at goals so differently. “Yeah, sure, they’re helpful, but they’re made to be changed! They’re our goals. We just rejgger them!”

“You can’t do that! That’s cheating!”

Cheating?

I squawked, “IT’S MY GOAL. There’s no such thing as cheating in our creative goals!”

She looked a little dumbfounded, as if she’d found out that gravity didn’t work the way she thought it did. 

So in case you’re feeling a little upside down, too, let me say it even more clearly. 

When you set a goal for yourself that no one’s paying you to do, a goal that will fill your creative spirit, the spirit that makes you glow the brightest, you get to change and adjust that goal anytime you want.

You can do it once a year, or you can do it twice before breakfast. 

When I’m writing, I’m not filling out a time card, billing my working hours to someone who requires that I meet Goal A and Timeline B.

I simply want to write something, and having a goal helps me get closer to it.

Missing the goal? It doesn’t hurt anyone else, and here’s the important part—it shouldn’t hurt you, either. 

In my old life at 911, if I screwed up, someone might die. 

But not meeting my writing goal doesn’t get anyone killed. No one goes to jail. The Goal Police don’t come and put me in Goal Gaol.

Why You’re Already AWESOME

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

I’m entering 2021 in a great deal of pain. At this point, we’re pretty clear that I have a regrown, unnecessary organ that wants out, which is a theme in my life. I’ve regrown my tonsils three times now.

This time, it seems to be an ovary that arrived without invitation. No, I know you’ve never heard of an ovary growing back after a full hysterectomy. I certainly hadn’t, either, when it was diagnosed a few years ago.

But now that sucker is knocking, demanding out like a feral cat trapped in a barrel full of cucumbers. I’m fighting with all the insurance and medical powers that be to get seen, to be treated, to be handled in a smart, compassionate, knowledgable way.

And it’s not easy. It took twelve days of agony to even be able to get pain medication. I’ve had the ultrasound, and now I need the MRI, and that’s what’s on my To Do list for the first week of 2021. 

Had I known this was coming, I would never have started a new project like this podcast, yo. My plan was to post here at least a couple of times a week.

But hey. 

You’re Already Ready is about this one fact: we all have THIS life to live. 

This one. The life we’re living right now. 

Not the life we want to have in a week or a year. 

Not the life that we resolve to begin at the start of the month or when the calendar turns. 

Me, right now, on the couch, in pain but happy. One shot, unedited.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I see myself in this moment. Right now.

This person is enough. This person is just right. 

That gorgeous being that glows at you from the other side of the glass? You’re already exactly right, too. 

God forbid I waste a second of the day I’m given today feeling bad about who I’m not. 

I don’t need to be skinnier than I am to live this life to the fullest. A new car will do absolutely nothing for my happiness levels. The fact that I haven’t hit the NYT bestseller list has no bearing on my worth at this very moment. 

Nope, at this exquisite moment, I’m curled up on the couch in the home I adore under a soft blanket I made while the person I love best makes us bacon and eggs for a late lunch. 

But Rachael! You want to get better physically, right? Isn’t that a change that you want? Aren’t you saying that you want to fix what’s broken in your body? 

Hell, yeah, I want to fix what’s broken.

My body—its size, its softness, its strength and its weaknesses—is just right. None of those parts of me are broken!

But there is, currently, a broken part inside my body. It’s not like I’m wishing that the regrown organ was smarter or sexier or had less cellulite. 

Consider my old, reliable, and most importantly, paid-off, SmartCar. It’s fantastic and fun and it’s a convertible! I swear I can get more home from Ikea than my wife can with her station wagon. 

Made to park in SF!

But if my beloved car’s electrical system goes wonky and the headlights stop working, I don’t get mad at it for being less than it could be. I don’t get angry at it for failing me. It’s just something actually broken that needs fixing. 

Fixing something that’s broken is entirely different than fixing something that isn’t! Especially when someone’s trying to make money on you by making you think you should be fixed!

Right now, I’m in the middle of this one, sweet, ridiculous, incredible life, and I’m riding it out in this body, the one that’s wrapped around my heart. 

I’m incredible. Unique. Myself. And I’m exactly enough, even when my body is throwing a wobbly. Even when I’m in pain. I’m worthy of care, and of fighting for. 

(This week I got to hear my wife on multiple phone calls, fighting for me. She spoke so assertively at one point that someone thought she was a doctor. I was, at that moment, too weak to fight the way I needed to be fought for. It was a lovely reminder that I’m worth it.) 

I’m not a before photo.

I don’t have to wait until I deserve happiness, or peace, or love. 

And I refuse to listen to people who want to separate me from my hard-earned money by telling me that I’m not exactly enough, as I am. Right now. 

I will not punish myself for not being someone different, or someone that I can’t be right now. If you’ve known me for more than a minute, you know I pride myself on working harder than anyone else. (It’s not something to be proud of. I’m working on it.)

But right now? I can’t work. I had to push the classes that were due to start yesterday. Those classes take all my energy, and that’s part of why they work so well. I refuse to give them less.

So I have to take some time off. And instead of feeling terrible about that, the way I normally would default to feeling, I’m refusing to fall for that bullshit.

I don’t have to work hard to deserve to be kind to myself.

I already deserve the happiness I’m finding right here, listening to the new Taylor Swift album, smelling the forest-scented candle burning on the table next to me, with two dogs curled under the blanket that’s draped over my legs. Yes, I’m in pain. But I’m happy.

This life is ALREADY HAPPENING. 

My ideal life won’t start when I think I’m finally ready for it. Thank god! I’m the worst judge of that. I’m so grateful it’s going on right now. 

You don’t have to wait one more second to be worthy of loving yourself deeply.

Wherever you’re hearing my voice or reading my words, please hear this: you are already deeply perfect. If you’ve got broken headlights or your steering wheel’s falling off, you deserve a great mechanic, not a lecture on how to do it better next time.

You’re in the middle of your incredible life. I’m so proud of you.

Together, we dance forward. And it doesn’t matter if you think you’re a good dancer or not. You are.

You are breathtaking.

The post Why You’re Already AWESOME appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 208: CJ Cooke on the Thrills of Contemporary Gothic Horror

C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative writing interventions for mental health. The Nesting is her most recent release. 

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!

Enter for a chance to win her book! CLICK HERE.

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 #208 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Absolutely thrilled that you’re here today because we are talking to C.J. Cooke who wrote a book called The Nesting, which blew my damn mind, it’s a really excellent representation of gothic horror, or gothic thriller really straddles the line there. And it scared me and it kept me up and it most of all put me into a place where I usually am not. In the snow, in the cold, and it was really, really, really beautifully written and kept me on the edge of my seat so I was so thrilled to talk to CJ about this. What happens sometimes, and you’ve heard me talk about this before, is that publishers will reach out to me and ask me to talk to some of their writers and I will say yes to the ones that I’m interested in and no to the ones I am not. And I was interested in CJ and I got the net galley version, so I could read it on my Kindle.



[00:01:23] However, they also sent me a paper back. So I’m trying to divest of belongings as we get ready to move to New Zealand, sometime in the next six months to a year. So I don’t need copies of books. This one is un-cracked, I’ve never opened it and I would love to give it to someone. So if you are interested in winning a copy of CJ’s book, go to RachaelHerron.com/Win. RachaelHerron.com/Win, you can sign up for that if you’re interested and also I have a large confession to make. Probably about a month ago, I also had an extra copy of Becca Syme’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. That is a hugely popular, popular episode of the show, everybody loves listening to Becca Syme talk. The book is fantastic. You need it. And about a month ago, I said I had a copy and I would give it away to somebody in a drawing. For the last month, I will admit this to you. I have not been able to find the sheet on which I tallied the entries. I can’t find it, every single Thursday as I go to set up Friday’s podcast. I look for it and I’m giving up. I’m giving up. So I apologize to those of you who entered last time. Please enter again, same place RachaelHerron.com/Win. And that is a drawing for either CJ’s, Nesting book or Becca’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit and either of which if you win it, I will be happy to send it to you and I know you’ll be happy to get it. So come over and enter for that. I would really love to send these out international is okay. I’m willing to pay the money to ship a book to you. So please come over and enter. 



[00:03:12] And what else is going on? Well, the big thing that’s going on of course is National Novel Writing Month, which I am 5 days deep and so far I’m behind. And that is okay. I did the first 3 days’ spot on, even November 3rd, the day we were all glued to the news and we’re still glued to the news over here in America because, wow. Anyway, I actually wrote on that day because it was a Tuesday and I had Rachael Says Write where we gathered together and write together. So I really, really needed that. We also have that this afternoon and I’m using it however, yesterday was our recovery day after the election. And I had given myself the entire day off and I meant it, which is sometimes hard for me to do so I did nothing. I played some Poker online with no money just playing on the game because I’m trying to learn Texas Hold ‘Em, I’m very, very interested in poker right now, because right now I am reading The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova and it is so good. It’s about a woman who decides to learn Texas Hold ‘Em, in order to write a stunt memoir in which she spends a year doing that, and then enters the world series of poker. And I will not tell you how it goes. It’s just really beautifully written and I’m deeply into it in the way she looks at the way humans make decisions as she was writing this book. And I have gone on a tangent to tell you, I played poker on November 4th, instead of writing my words. And you know, what, what I want to say to everyone right now is that is okay. It is always okay. No matter what your goal is, if your goal is to win NaNoWriMo and write 1,667 words a day, fantastic. Knowing your goal is huge. In my classes, I’m constantly talking about rejiggering our goals. You can look ahead, see how many days you have to write until your specific goal, which could be anything.



[00:05:21] Tell yourself the number of words you have to write in a day in order to hit that. And if you don’t hit it, rejigger. Rejigger, move the date out, move your numbers up. Those are the two things you can do. However, for NaNoWriMo, this is my decision this year and I’ve never done it this way. In the past, I have let myself get very far behind in NaNo and then I get frustrated and then I just kind of give up and I write wherein when I can and I stop tracking my numbers. This is what I decided even before NaNo started this year. On a day that I don’t write, on the day that I don’t get those 1667 words, I am not going to try to make them up. What instead, I will do the next day is try to get 1,667. And I will try to do that every day in the month of November. If I end up short on words, fantastic. I’ll probably still end up with 40 or 45,000 words and if I go over, fabulous and I hit it and I win, great. No matter what though, this will net me more words than giving up on day 10 when I’m three days behind, which happens so often with NaNoWriMo and which happens so often with our goals, the, the goal of goals is to set that goal and show up.



[00:06:39] What we don’t want goals to do is start punishing us because we’ve gotten so far behind. When we get behind, we reset, we rejigger, we move the starting point again for us and we move it again and again and again, and I have to tell you when I’m on serious deadline, I rejigger almost every day for about the last month that I’m on deadline, because I’m constantly either writing more than I thought or lots more often, fewer words than I thought. Rejiggering is the name of the game and you get to do it in any way that you want in any way that helps you best. So I hope that that helps to hear, I hope that some of you listening are participating in NaNoWriMo. You can always come and find me over at RachaelHerron over there. I think that’s who I am. Either that, or Aryana Gogo, I lost my account for a couple of years, couldn’t remember how to log in. So I made a new account, so I think RachaelHerron is the one I’m at right now. Okay. That’s about it. Let’s get into awesome interview with CJ Cooke. I know you’re going to adore her. Don’t forget to come by and enter for a chance to win her book RachaelHerron.com/Win. 



[00:07:48] I’m all out of a patron mini coach questions too. So if you are supporting me at the $5 a month or up level, please send me some questions. I’d love to do another mini episode. Those make me really, really happy. And you know what else makes me happy? Knowing that you’re out there writing too, that we are doing this together and that we are struggling and failing and exalting and having a wonderful time sometimes. Remember that this is fun. Look for the joy inside your writing. And we will talk soon my friends, happy writing.



[00:08:24] 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: [00:08:40] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, CJ Cooke. Hello, CJ.

C. J. Cooke: [00:08:44] Hi there. Thanks so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:46] I am absolutely thrilled. If anybody’s watching the most people listen to this as a podcast, but if anybody’s watching on the YouTube, we get to see Ralph, the cocker spaniel who is so, we had a cocker spaniel dachshund mix for a while, and her face looked like his.

C. J. Cooke: [00:09:04] Really

Rachael Herron: [00:09:07] It’s, I saw him already and I’m in love with him. Let me give you a little bio before we get started. CJ Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in 23 languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative writing interventions for mental health. So the creative writing interventions for mental health is so fascinating to me. And I am reading your book that by the time this podcast goes out is called The Nesting, and it is truly CJ, exactly what I wanted to read 

C. J. Cooke: [00:09:42] Yay 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:43] It, you know, in this time of weirdness and strange things going on, I just keep going to scary things.

C. J. Cooke: [00:09:50] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:51] Not very pandemic things, but I want truly scary and there was one night, a couple of nights ago I couldn’t sleep after reading your book. And I was fighting a headache and I turned on, I turned on a meditation that I like to use, and in this meditation, he walks you through cities and then out into the country. And my brain kept getting confused and I was in Norway and I was running from thing, so beautiful. So I’m loving it. So thank you for that. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:10:18] I’m so pleased. That’s good to hear. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:20] So this is a show about process and you had an interesting process for this book. You actually got a grant to go to Norway, right?

C. J. Cooke: [00:10:27] Yeah, I did. I hadn’t been before. Oh, it was absolutely transformative. You know, I, I, I recommend highly. I feel like I can only ever write again, if I’m on a boat sailing around the West coast of Norway, so, but no, I- I hadn’t been to Norway before, before I wrote The Nesting. But when I was plotting the book, I’m thinking about the particular tone I wanted for the story, because I knew it had to be a Gothic and which was a departure for me. But I, I have particular thoughts about the relationship between Gothic and despair and I, I can talk about that, but I think that the Gothic is sort of the genre of the moment, because it you know, really speaks to what we’re going through. But, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:11:07] So I, I knew I needed a setting that was going to be, you know, really sort of beautiful, but hostile and not very human friendly. And that’s particularly with Norway is that it’s this place that is so gorgeous, but you know, it doesn’t look like a place or it doesn’t feel like place that human should be in. You feel like you’re encroaching upon this terrain that that is not for you which I loved. So, but yeah, I decided that that was the spot for the book. And I applied to the arts council and they were so wonderful because they give me a ground on that meant I could go. I went four times. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:44] Oh wow!

C. J. Cooke: [00:11:45] I know. Well, so I had to go to also to chat with, I had to go to also, I had to also to chat with them, the co-director of the office of Nordic architecture or the Nordic office of architecture, because the book involves architecture 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:02] In a very deep way. Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:12:04] Yeah. It’s sort of part of the story is that the reason it’s set in Norway is that this architect is these from London. And he’s building this high concept eco-friendly summer home in this, in the wilds of Norway. And so I’m not an architect and when I did do a lot of research into just general architecture, but in particular it’s, it’s, it’s sat in, in Norway and I needed to know the kind of policies and what I couldn’t make that stuff up. You know, I had to get it right. So I went to speak to him and all this low, and that was, that was terrific. And he really gave me good guidance, but then I did feel like I just needed to be, I didn’t know much about Norway. I did know that it’s a very progressive society and not politically for me was, was very appealing for that thread in the book, the politics of the book and I also wanted to say what climate change looks like in the Arctic, because I had heard that it’s most visible there and I, you know, I’ve nothing to compare it to it’s not, you know, but I did speak to I went to this little fishing village at the very top of Norway, in Finmark beside the Russian border. There’s only like 60 people in this little fishing village. So I was chatting to them and, and from that those conversations, I was able to get much more insight into, you know, it’s stuff that you maybe can’t find online. So it’s just being there, experiencing the place, experiencing what it’s like to, you know, for there to be new song. It was just dark all the time. And there was two hours in the day where it was slightly like dusk, but not sunny or anything like that. I thought, how do people live? You know, but they, they do and they’re happy. But it was just phenomenal. I love Norway and I would move there. So good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:51] Well, I think at your knowledge and all of that study comes through it and it comes through in the exact perfect way for a writer to place it. It’s never heavy handed. It just feels like being there and we’re with both of these female characters and it’s, it’s pretty funny because this morning I was pulling up your bio so I could read it. And, you know, looking at the press materials that the publisher sent me and I realized, Oh my God, it’s, it’s a Gothic. And that is how you have contemporized it. Is that, is that a word? Yes. Is that, I’m a huge fan of the Gothic I was raised on Mary Stewart. I love a woman on a cliff side and I hadn’t put it together that it was, it was so obviously a Gothic you’ve, you’ve really recast it in this contemporary way. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:14:39] Yeah, I, I think it was very, because I didn’t have a necessarily light bulb moment where I had this story just there, it came in sort of little drips and drabs, and I knew the sort of things I wanted to write about. And I wanted to write a book that I would read, which is a good idea. Yeah, I, I wasn’t shooting the gothic though. I get quite nerdy about form on John Roe and things like that. So I knew specifically this is going to be a Gothic, as I said, I am interested in the relationship between the Gothic and despair. And I think that, you know, the Gothic examines the unspeakable attributes of despair and the ways that it’s, it’s very surreal, or the way that reality kind of gets tipped upside down and the, the logical world and the rational world cease to exist and the unknown is thrust to the forefront. So I just think that this kind of you know, the state of despair when there’s no solution, then, then what is that? It’s, it’s despair, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:48] But you up the stakes, even more by making our main character main, main character, have mental health issues. Can you speak to that? Because that’s incredibly beautiful where she sees when she sees things that don’t make sense, she cannot trust herself. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:16:03] Yeah. So Lexi came sort of fully formed it’s funny because when I was planning this story, I kind of felt it was going to be this quite serious, scary story, obviously, very sinister. And so I start writing it and Lexi just comes in and has the sort of humor. She’s very funny and

Rachael Herron: [00:16:27] Yeah. Witty. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:16:29] Yeah. And she’s quirky and kind of just, I just thought she was phenomenal to write. I just thought she was just this really, really interesting character that I didn’t have to sit down and, you know, do character interviews and choose her or anything like that. She was just there. And so I just had this fun writing her. I mean, I think a lot of writing is going with what works. You experiment, if it seems right, you think right. That’s, that works and I’ll keep that. With Lexi, you know, I hadn’t plotted the story when I started that, an idea of some elements. And I wrote the first three or four chapters, which remained in the, as they are in the book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:04] Oh, wow. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:17:05] And then I went back and kind of plotted. I got index cards and everything, and I, I upload as from there, but I had to get a sense of, of who she was, and I, I do know from experience that if the voice of the book is not right, if it’s just not working, then it doesn’t matter what your plot looks like. If you don’t have a voice. But because of the voice was working, but it was sort of just there, so all the, I think, because I hadn’t sort of delved into her character and her history too deeply, when I was writing her, I was kind of curious. So I was thinking, Oh, and, and how can I investigate that more? So obviously further along in the book, certain things are revealed about her paths and on her life. But yeah, we, we begin when she’s at rock bottom and I’m not sure that that was planned. It was just the way it came. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:00] I, I love that. And there are, and these are questions that are not on the list that I sent you, but because I am a writer, and I am so fascinated with this, you did, you played with voice and tense in this book in a nesting way. Like there are nested stories. Lexi is in first person past tense for the now section, and the past section, which is not very past, past, but it’s in the present tense omniscient. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:18:32] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:18:33] How did you make that decision? I mean, it’s, it’s so curious. I’ve never, I- it’s, it’s unique. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:18:38] I think that was actually a conscious decision creatively, you know, I think we like, we all of us like to sort of push ourselves a wee bit and just challenge ourselves. And my natural inclination is to write in first person, that’s just what comes natural. I think all writers lean either way. You’re naturally towards third person or you’re naturally towards first, a minus first person and I’ve been really trying to write in third person. And I just think in terms of, in terms of the reader, it’s nice to have a bit of a change.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:06] It really is. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:19:07] Yeah. It, it just keeps things in a rhythmic way. I don’t mean changing all over the place, but to have a kind of consistent pattern, but there’s a bit of alteration and I do like first person as well, because it can you know go, it’s like a floating camera. Isn’t it? It can go past these and not I suppose on hindsight was, was, was maybe necessary. But for me, the third person, the shift from first person to third person, I thought, you know, I do enjoy writing Lexi, but I think maybe the reader will get fatigued if it’s all through her perspective. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Yeah. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:19:46] So we need a wee bit of a change and I could also change the tone. So then the narrator for the third person is, is just different. And maybe I was trying to capture the world how it looked through Tom and Aurelia’s eyes and they’re quite different people and different, a different strata of society as well, so yeah, but it was a bit of a challenge,  

Rachael Herron: [00:20:08] I bet it was a fun challenge and very interesting as a re- as a writer to read, I bet that the reader, I think readers don’t think about these things very much. They’re they go with the book, but as a writer, it’s been fascinating. You’re just such a beautiful writer. You really are. I’m just

C. J. Cooke: [00:20:22] Thank you. Thank you so much

Rachael Herron: [00:20:24] So, so, so, so much. Okay. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

C. J. Cooke: [00:20:30] Oh gosh. It’s I think it’s well, actually I remember what this book. So I wrote the last third of it when I was on that ship that I was on in Norway and actually that

Rachael Herron: [00:20:42] Oh fun

C. J. Cooke: [00:20:43] – that, that I know, right. It was, it was, it was really literally pardon upon pushing the boat out because, because I’d never been away from my kids that long I was, I was gone for like two weeks and

Rachael Herron: [00:20:54] That’s a long time. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:20:56] It was a long time and so my little, my youngest child is autistic and I haven’t been able to go away at all. She’s, she’s at nine. So she, she, she’s verbal now and she can communicate with me in Skype. I mean, she’s still filmed me every day and demanded that I return home, but I just felt more comfortable leaving her, 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:20] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:21:22] now that she was able to communicate and let me know she was fine, but yet, two weeks, I was away and I thought, right, I have, no, I was off work, I didn’t have the school run or all the stuff of normal life. I thought I’m using this time. So I really just pushed myself to write the last third and actually that you asked about the challenges of writing, I, I thought it’s so good that I’m able to just be away and sit in my cabin at night and write because mentally I think that last third, where you’re having to pull together all the narrative threads that you’ve set up at the beginning. Cause you know, you can set up whatever you liked at the beginning, but you have to follow through, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:22:03] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:22:04] So I saw, thank goodness., I’m here because it’s not just the time you need the mental space to pull all those threads together. So that, that is a challenge. And I have PhD students who are writing novels, and I tell them this all the time that you know, that, that last bit pulling everything together is so tough. So tough. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:25] I just generally don’t do it, but yeah, I, my first drafts are so bad that nothing is pulled together at the end. And I usually quit in despair and then go back and start revising. cause I, it’s so hard. Yeah.

C. J. Cooke: [00:22:37] Right. I get it, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:39] So what is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

C. J. Cooke: [00:22:42] Oh, well, when I think, I think when you get a writing day or just when, when you write something that surprises you, and I think that’s why writing Lexi was too joyous, because she just seemed to come from a place that I, I hadn’t, I, I dunno it was like maybe hearing someone talk or whatever, but it just seems so beyond what I had planned. And she just seemed to just talk and I just wrote, and that was terrific. You know, if, if, if every book was like that, it would be great. But that, that was a joy when, when you write something that is, it’s just like, oh yes, because you have this book in your head and somehow that’s process or the journey from head to screen or page. You know, if something gets lost, or it can get lost very, very easily. And this is why, you know, writing so hard. If you could just download it then maybe that would be great, but 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:41] There’s something about Lexi that is just so joyous to be around. There’s I talked to my students a lot about you know, creating that empathetic care. They don’t have to be sympathetic, but that we have to have some kind of empathy for this character to keep going with them, there’s no and there’s, you fall in love with Lexi on the very first page, you are

C. J. Cooke: [00:23:57] Oh, good

Rachael Herron: [00:23:58] 100% in her camp from the, I just, it would be a craft tip for people just to read your book on that. Speaking of craft tips, can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

C. J. Cooke: [00:24:10] Ticking clock. I teach my students this ticking clock technique. I think that you know, sometimes tension is this abstract concept and it’s why we see blockbusters on the screen that you can have any number of explosions, but you might not care. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:29] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:24:30] But, but nonetheless, I think if you’ve got a story and you, you’ve got, you know, you thought about your characters and you thought about roughly what happens and you’re not sure why it seems like a quiet story or it’s not really, you know, there’s not sort of tension in there. I think if you introduced the ticking clock technique, then it’s, it’s all good. It’s, and it doesn’t have to be a timer on a bomb in a, you know, in a building that has five minutes to go. It can be, you know, like it can be a, any number of things. It can be just a tally of, of things or just something that is, is reminding the reader of limited or finite time or space that a particular problem has to be resolved by or there might be a crisis. So I think that’s, that’s might be something that you know, it, it doesn’t involve major structural tweaking, but if, if, if there’s a piece of writing that you have that you think, you know, it’s maybe not, nothing’s moving. Just think about it a way that you can decrease the, the, the, the time zone. And there are some high or the, the numbers in some way, if you can remind the reader that there’s a finite kind of shape or space here, that the story exists then, then I think that’s good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:53] And it doesn’t have to be relegated to one genre. It doesn’t have to be thriller or horror. It can be any genre that you up those stakes intention by using that something, something that

C. J. Cooke: [00:26:05] Yeah 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:09] I forget all the time trying to create tension. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

C. J. Cooke: [00:26:14] Oh, my gosh, it’s going to sound so boring, but sleep. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:21] No, that’s not boring. That’s like the focus of my life. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:26:24] Yeah. Right. And I know trying to get enough sleep is just like, you know, my it’s endless this mission, because I just can’t. I, I really envy people who say, Oh, I had four hours sleep last night and they, they seem that they can string a sentence together. It’s, it’s marvelous. And it’s like a super power that I don’t have. But so when I get enough sleep, I, it’s amazing. I just feel like I can think, and I can, I can function and I have clarity and that is just wonderful. So yeah, I, I do think, and I actually find writing a novel is so draining. It is really a marathon for the brain, it is so taxing and I do find more and more that, you know, maybe it’s certain stages of the novel, but I just need more sleep when I’m at a certain point, because I think I’m constantly just even when I’m not at my desk or not at my computer, I am just processing and processing and thinking and it’s so tiring. So you just, you do need to, to do that just as much as if you were training for a marathon, which someday I’m sure I will, but you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:32] Yeah. Yeah. I bet on the boat, and when you’re pushing that last third out, I bet you slept like a baby because you didn’t have kids. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:27:40] Oh I did. Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:43] You are constantly surrounded by newness and you’re working your ass off.

C. J. Cooke: [00:27:47] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:50] It was; it must be wonderful.

C. J. Cooke: [00:27:50] It was so good. And I also find that because it was so dark, like I had no clue what was going on, you know, your setting. It was, it was fabulous. I mean, this was meant to be a ferry, but it was, it was a ship it’s like, not like a cruise, cruise ship, but it was definitely lovely. But, yeah. To be sitting, eating your breakfast or your lunch and its just midnight outside is like it’s so your body has to adjust to that. But I did, like, I was able to write until like three in the morning and then sort of sleep into whatever. And I am a night owl, which is not good with, with kids and I, I wish I could convert to a Lark 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:31] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:28:32] Because 5:30 would be ideal, but I’m just not that person. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:35] Yeah. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:28:36] So 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:37] I love that

C. J. Cooke: [00:28:38] It was good to be able to sleep in.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:41] Okay, so what is the best book that you have read recently? I would personally, and I do not say to my listeners no, I do not say this for everybody. I personally would say, your book. What, I want everybody to read The Nesting. So what about you though? What’s the best book you’ve read recently? 

C. J. Cooke: [00:28:54] Well, I’ve read quite a few good ones and there’s, there’s a debut called The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd, and I’m not sure that that’s, I’m not sure if it’s, it’s published in the States. But it’s really good, but there’s another one by Camilla Bruce and she’s a Norwegian author actually, called You Let Me In. Oh my goodness. It blew me away.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:20] What genre is it?

C. J. Cooke: [00:29:23] It’s creepy horror. It’s got weird Bay fairy folk in it and oh my gosh. I just, yeah, it’s a book I’m like begging people to read, but it is very weird. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:37] Yeah

C. J. Cooke: [00:29:38] Which is right up my street. It’s not up, everyone’s street but, 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:41] It’s Camilla Bruce and what’s the title again? 

C. J. Cooke: [00:29:43] Camilla Bruce, You Let Me In. It’s kind of- the title, I don’t think, I don’t think it’s like it, it might be alludes to the book being in a different genre, but it’s just, it’s a unique book and it, I just love it. I thought it was phenomenal. So that, that was my, and it’s a debut, but I just blew me away. It was just 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] How fun. Oh, I can’t wait to read that then

C. J. Cooke: [00:30:04] I know. Then I could read weird all day long, so yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:08] That’s, that’s what I want right now. So speaking of creepy and awesome. Can you tell people maybe the premise of The Nesting and then where they can find you.

C. J. Cooke: [00:30:18] Certainly, Yes. So The Nesting is a Gothic suspense, and it’s set in Norway. It’s about a nanny who or a woman called Lexi who takes a job as a nanny under false pretenses. She’s not a nanny not trained at all, but she ends up being a nanny to these two little girls in a remote part of Norway where she finds that there are spooky goings on, and the, the mother whose children she’s taking care of doesn’t appear to have committed suicide as everyone is telling her, but seems to be murdered. And so, she has to deal with this kind of threat that’s posed, but there’s a lot of folklore. There’s a lot of ghostliness and there’s a lot of wildlife in this story. So I’m, I’m really hoping it appeals to people who want a really epic halloween read with all of those different elements. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:12] So good. And those little girls, Gaia and Cocoa are wonderful.

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:17] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:31:18] I just, I could read them all day long

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:19] I loved writing them and I loved writing the relationship between Gaia and Lexi in particular. I mean, I just, I loved writing that relationship and I thought, why, why couldn’t, I wish I could write a series of this, but I know that that’s yeah, that they were

Rachael Herron: [00:31:36] I have this theory and I’m not sure if it’s correct, but that’s some of, sometimes we get a gift book that’s, there is no gift book. There’s no book that is easy to write from beginning to end. It’s impossible. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:46] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:31:47] Every one’s like for me, it’s like one in every five or six books. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:52] I agree. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:53] Hits

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:54] I, I agree. It is that ratio and it’s, it’s sad that that is the case. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:58] I know. Every time I think, Oh, I finally got it. Now I know how to write a book 

C. J. Cooke: [00:32:02] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:02] And it’s not true. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:32:04] I know there are some books it’s like digging for coal. It’s like, I’ve literally lost the ability to write. I dunno, what I’ve been doing all this time maybe I need to go on teach Pilates or something, but, but this was, this was definitely, it wasn’t, it was still hard in some ways, but, you know, but on hindsight I just had such joy writing it and it, it is lovely when it comes out as a kind of hat book you had in your head is sort of there or it’s even better than that. So yeah. You asked where it’s going to be sold, I think it’s going to be in most Barnes and Nobles and all the excellent indie stores support independence. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:41] Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good. And where can we find you? Online 

C. J. Cooke: [00:32:46] Find me. so I’m on social media on Instagram, I’m cjcooke_author, and that’s Cooke with an E and I’ve been posting some of the footage from Norway, like the videos and photographs I took to their on my Instapage and Facebook, I have an author page as just CJCookeBooks, I think it might be CJ Cooke books. And then on Twitter, I’m CJessCooke that’s my handle (C J E S S C O O K E) and I have a website, cjcookeauthor.com  (CarolynJessCooke.com) and The Nesting has its own dedicated website where I sort of posted a research blog and that’s TheNestingBook.com  

Rachael Herron: [00:33:28] Ooh, I’m going to go check that out immediately. Maybe after I finished the book, I don’t want to, I just want to finish the book. I was so irritated that I couldn’t finish it last night. But I needed sleep like we were talking about, 

C. J. Cooke: [00:33:39] well, exactly.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:42] CJ. It has been such a treat to talk to you. I’m very sad that we can’t see Ralph a little bit more. We’ve just, you know, but I know that he’s, he’s there. Thank you so much for being here and for writing such an amazing book that I am personally learning so much from and just enjoying the hell out of. Thank you. 

C. J. Cooke: [00:33:59] Oh that’s good to hear. Thank you very much for having me have a great day. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:02] You too. 

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. 208: CJ Cooke on the Thrills of Contemporary Gothic Horror appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 207: Donna Baier Stein’s Surprising Tip for Getting Into the Voice of a Character

Donna Baier Stein is the author of The Silver Baron’s Wife (PEN/New England Discovery Award, Foreword Reviews Winner), Sympathetic People (Iowa Fiction Award Finalist), Letting Rain Have Its Say, and Scenes from the Heartland: Stories Based on Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton (Foreword Reviews Finalist). A Founding Editor of Bellevue Literary Review, she founded and publishes Tiferet Journal. She has received a Bread Loaf Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University Fellowship, and other awards. Donna’s writing appears in Next Avenue, Virginia Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Writer’s Digest, LitHub, Washingtonian, and other journals as well as in I’ve Always Meant to Tell You (Pocket Books) and To Fathers: What I’ve Never Said (featured in O Magazine).

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. 

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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 #207 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so thrilled that you’re here today. Today, we are talking to Donna Baier Stein about her surprising tip for getting into the voice of a character. It was really, really fun to talk to her and the way she mixes art and writing. And I know that you are going to enjoy that portion of the podcast and what’s been going on around here. Well, I have been writing my Patreon essay, which is about to go out and I know that I have told you, the past that I’m writing this memoir called You’re Already Ready. It was called Replenish, and it was the result of me burning out at the end of 2017. I decided to take 2018 to do a month- sorry, a year-long challenge. Every month would be a different challenge, I would focus on one different thing and see if it could help replenish my empty well. Well, what ended up happening, was completely unexpected and it happened exactly at the inciting incident wherein right about 20% through that year because of what I was doing and because of the journaling I was doing, I discovered that I had slipped into alcoholism, which was my biggest fear of my life. One of my biggest fears. And it had happened, after many years of being a heavy drinker, I was no longer able to stop drinking. So I continued to write those monthly essays for my Patreon subscribers, and they were true and real and honest, and they told the way I felt, but I kept all mentioned of my recovery out of them. We’re just going to have to ignore that cat; who’s yelling in the background. I apologize for that. That’s what he does. 



[00:02:05] And so I kept all the mention of alcoholism and addiction out of those essays. I am now as I’m revising the memoir, I’m putting them back in because I wanted to be a true representation of the year that I spent. So I am pulling in a bunch of stuff from the journals and I am doing one essay and then I do a little bit of a journal about what was happening at that time in terms of recovery. And today I am working on that inciting incident moment of that discovery and what happened after that and how I felt, which was not good. It was not good. Let’s, let’s put it that way. So it’s been actually a really fun for the last few days to be going through those journal entries and doing what we get to do with journal entries. When we are memoirists, we get to put things together. We get to take out the boring idiotic sentences and finesse some of the sentences that were not even real words. If any of you were journalists, you know what I mean. Not adding anything, but cleaning them up and making them readable and hopefully enjoyable. And I get to send that out this week for my Patreon subscribers. And I’m a little bit nervous because this is, that was an intense thing that happened and it didn’t feel good. I really liked writing about perhaps not feeling as good and then finding out how to feel better and that doesn’t happen for a while in this part of my story. And it doesn’t happen in this particular journal entry. How that goes over the course of a couple of the first days of me getting sober. So I’m excited to send that out and I am nervous and I’m happy to do that. 



[00:03:49] So that’s been my writing for the last couple of days and I’m also plotting for NaNoWriMo, for the few people who are listening, who don’t know what that is, it is National Novel Writing Month. It happens every year in November. It starts November 1st, ends November 30th. It is a free online challenge in which you write a book in a month, you write 50,000 words. As soon as you write 50,000 words, you win, you win NaNoWriMo. What do you win? Not much. You win, congratulations! A heartfelt congratulation from the NaNoWriMo staff. And, but the big thing that you win is you could just say forever that you won NaNoWriMo, that you wrote a book in a month. It’s a short book. 50,000 words is a short book. It’s like a Hemingway-esque of maybe like a, of, of Mice & Men Steinbeck length but it’s a book. My first time I did NaNo was in 2006 and that book became How to Knit a Love Song, my first published book from Harper Collins and I have participated every year since then. I don’t always win. I hope I win this year. I’m really going to give it a good shot this year. I might not. And that’s okay. I will still write more words because I’m doing NaNo than I would if I weren’t. And that is one of the awesome things. There won’t be any in-person NaNoWriMo events, which is too bad because those writings where you get together in cafes and you have challenges to see who can write the fastest. Cause you’re not writing good words in NaNo, you are writing fast. So necessarily, they’re going to be crappy and that’s what we want. 



[00:05:25] So there’s no getting together in cafes to do those kind of challenges. So there will be so many online sprints and challenges and zoom rooms, and you can find all of those at the forums in NaNoWriMo. I save looking at the forums, of course, for after I’ve done my work for the day after I’ve written my 1,667 words that day, I can spend as much time as I want in the forums. And to read what other people are doing and harnessing that energy of everybody doing this at the same time is something that’s really incredible. So as this goes out tomorrow on the 30th of October, we’ll be starting on Sunday. So I think you should join us. I joined my first year without even an idea of what my book was going to be about. I just knew it was going to be about a woman who loved knitting. There we go. And I started, and again, it doesn’t have to be good. You just write fast. There is something called the reverse Nano. If you want to Google that, pull that up. I’ve done that a couple of times. It’s pretty great. You start the month with a high word count per day. I think it goes from like 4,000 words and then down the second day, maybe to 3000 something, and every day you write fewer words until the very end of the month, the very last day, you only have to write one word. That’s your goal on the 30th of November is to write your 50,000 word and you can find that by Googling reverse NaNo. Maybe I’ll do that. I don’t know. We’ll see. 



[00:06:46] Anyway, I am excited about it. I’m excited about the book I’m going to write, and I’m going to try to bring to this book, just joy. Just happiness. Just fun. I want to have fun on the page and I want to remember to have fun. So you should come friend me over there. I think I am Rachael Herron. If I’m not Rachael Herron, I’m Yana Gogo. Although I think that’s my old name. Their website is kind of wonky right now. I’m not totally happy with the website, but it’s fine. It is what it is. It does what it does. It is a nonprofit that raises money to bring this into school. Their young writers program is amazing. And if you do NaNoWriMo, I would humbly plead you to toss them a few dollars. This is a nonprofit. They work extremely hard all year to promote literacy and they’re amazing. So that’s NaNoWriMo.org  or just Google National Novel Writing Month, and you should play. 



[00:07:40] And now let us jump into the interview. I know you’re going to enjoy it. Come find me on the internet you can come over to HowDoYouWrite.net and leave me a comment or find me anywhere else that I am online and tell me how your writing is going. I really want to know. Okay. Happy writing my friends.



[00:07:57] Hey writers, I’ve opened up some coaching slots. I’m not taking clients on a weekly basis right now as I’m working on my own books, but I am doing one-offs. I call them tune-ups. Tell me your plot problems and ask your character queries. Let me know what stumbling blocks you’re up against. Get tips and tricks to get you back on the right track. Ask any questions about all things publishing. Together we’ll brainstorm your specific plan of action, making sure you’re in the driver’s seat of your book again. You’ll receive a 30-minute call over Skype or FaceTime, giving you the honest encouragement you need to keep getting better or a polite ass-kicking if that’s what you need and ask for it. Plus, you’ll get an MP3 audio recording or MP4 video, your choice of our chat. So you can re-listen at your leisure. And if you want a little more help, I can also critique either 10 pages or your book’s outline and talk you through my findings. Just check out RachaelHerron.com/Coach for more info. I’d love to work with you. Now on to the interview. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:59] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show my guest, Donna Baier Stein. Hi, Donna. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:09:04] Hi, Rachael, I’m happy to be here with you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:07] I’m thrilled to have you. Let me give you a little introduction before we get into the meat of it. Donna Baier Stein is the author of The Silver Barron’s Wife, which is a PEN New England Discovery Award, and a Foreword Reviews Winner, Sympathetic People. Which was an Iowa Fiction Award Finalist, Letting Rain Have Its Say and Scenes from the Heartland: Stories Based on Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton, a Founding Editor of Bellevue Literary Review. She found it in publishes Tiferet Journal. Is that how you say it? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:09:38] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:38] Great. She has received the Bread Loaf Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University Fellowship, and other awards. Her writing appears in Next Avenue, Virginia Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Writer’s Digest, LitHub, Washingtonian, and other journals. As well as in, I’ve Always Meant to Tell You from Pocket Books and To Fathers: What I’ve Never Said, featured in O Magazine. Welcome!

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:03] Thank you, Rachael. Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:06] It’s- I was looking at your website and so the newest book is the scenes from the Heartland, right? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:12] Yes. Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:15] So before actually I want to, I want to get to that at the end because it looks so fascinating. I was telling you before we got on here, that it’s at the top of my to be read pile right now, but let’s, first of all, that’s a lot of writing that you have under your belt 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:27] and a lot of different directions too. So I tend to, 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:32] I, I like that in a person I write in five genres. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:36] Yes. I noticed and it’s so impressive. All the books you’ve written and sold as well. So it’s terrific. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:43] But I really, and I really like that about people when we aren’t boxed in, when we have just, I know I’ve shot myself in the foot by going so many different directions, but I wouldn’t change it

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:56] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:10:57] because it’s weird. Yeah.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:10:57] Yeah, I feel the same because, each of the three fiction books are, they’re very different. And, but I feel like I want to write what I want to write. So it’s not the best marketing ploy, but as far as what one wants to do. So, and you have an animal there too. I have my cat. I’m trying to keep off my lap.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:22] I’m very sorry, my wife is getting home. So I’ll ask the question quickly and then I’ll go on mute. Can you tell us about your writing process, how you get it done? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:11:30] Yes. Usually I write in the mornings, sometimes at the computer, sometimes in a notebook and while I’m still in bed, I have to say that you know, I was thinking earlier, the last couple months I have been less, less consistent in my writing than I was earlier because I tend to get caught up in headlines, et cetera. I think it’s, it’s, you know, but I find, I really find, and I have always found this in my life that I feel much better when I write. As opposed to times that I don’t. Right, so having multiple projects is a good solution for that. So if I don’t feel like working on the, on the current novel, I, I can write a poem or an essay, et cetera, again, possibly not the most, you know, fine-tuned direct approach, but, but it’s what works for me, so. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:35] Now, let me ask about the writing by hand. How does that work? Is that like a first draft? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:12:41] Yes. And usually, and it’s actually interesting because it’s really just this summer that I went back to writing by hand I’ve, my first computer I remember was a televideo and I remember being so thrilled to, to be able to add it so easily and cut and paste paragraphs, et cetera, and not have to redo the whole- I’m older, so not, I didn’t have to redo the whole page if I wanted to change something on a page, as we used to have to do when we were using typewriters. So I love using the computer. My brain runs really fast. So, I find that typing on the keyboard generally works best for me, but again, this summer, I have found myself wanting to slow down a little bit and wanting the physical process of, of pen on paper. Spalding Gray, I don’t know if you know that name. He was from a long, from a while ago, he wrote something, I think, Swimming to Cambodia. He was on Broadway and he said something like, the pen becomes part of his musculature and I’ve just really wanted that physical presence of the pen on the, on the notebook. And then I type it into the computer, but, and, and that I do more for poetry and maybe an essay I don’t, I usually for the novel that I’m working on, I usually go directly to the computer. I write very messy first drafts and that’s something that do you too? 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:25] Oh, the worst, the absolute messiest. They’re unintelligible to any other human beings. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:14:29] Yes. And I always write way too much and, and I researched too much. Right. And put it all in and then when I go back, I need to cut out. But, you know, and I think I, I’m teaching a number of writing classes now. And one of the things that I really want any writer to know is, get something on the page. It doesn’t have to be perfect Ernest Hemingway said all first drafts are S H I T. Virginia Wolf said she looked for the diamonds and the dust steep in her writing and yeah, there are people and I have friends who are writers. There are people who can write first draft, final draft. I’m not one of those. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:13] I think they’re very few and far between, and they’ve developed a process of going through the garbage in their brain. And I always tell my students that that’s only your method, if you are revising as you go and you complete books. If you’re not completed books, that’s not your method. You should write a crappy first draft. But the other thing is, is it takes us so long to accept that. Because I really wanted for many years of not doing much writing, I wanted to finally be the writer who was good when I sat down. And I mean, we never get that way. I think it was Malcolm. I love your quotes. And Malcolm Gladwell said the first eight drafts of anything is terrible. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:15:47] Oh, good. Yeah. I have that to my repertoire. That’s good quote. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:53] Yeah. And it’s, it’s so hard to remember that. And I also love the, the by hand thing. I have gotten really into writing on my iPad, brand new thing, but the writing is actually searchable and you can change it into text if you want.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:09] So you use the stylus? 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:11] Yes. You use the Apple pencil it’s really kind of satisfying both sides of my brain of wanting the kinesthetic spirit connected experience. And also, you know, if I needed to move it into the word document I could, which I must garbage, but yeah, that’s great. I’m sorry. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:29] Good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] She’s finally stopped. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:32] Don’t worry. I have a dog back in the back of the house, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] Good. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:41] Perfectionism and with The Silver Barron’s wife, for instance, that that novel is a topic that obsessed me, for decades and, Baby Doe Tabor, in Colorado. I first learned about her when I was seven years old and her life obsessed me and

Rachael Herron: [00:17:04] Can you give me a quick sentence of who she was? Cause I’m not sure-

Donna Baier Stein: [00:17:09] Yes. Okay. She was a woman who lived in the late 19th, early 20th century. She bucked a lot of social expectations. She worked in the silver mines, which women didn’t do. She had two marriages. The first was to Harvey Doe and, and then she left, she divorced him. He, he was a Philander and possibly an addict. And she caught the attention of Horace Tabor, who was a very wealthy silver Baron. He was worth about $24 million in 1883. When, when Horace and Lizzie married, they married at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. President Chester Arthur came anyway her life and then when, when, the Sherman silver purchase act was repealed horses fortune, which was based on silver, being the standard for US, for the, for the United States, his fortune was, was lost and she stayed with him. And then when he died, she went to the matchless mine, where he had made most of his fortune. And she lived there for the next few decades, writing down thousands of dreams. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] Wait, she lived in, she lived in the mine? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:18:27] Well in the shack.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:28] Oh, how fascinating. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:18:29] Oh yes. So her life, her life includes fabulous wealth that dire poverty, materialism spirituality. She had two daughters, love, loneliness, just huge contrast in her life. And one of the things that really struck me, I think even as a child was I had these postcards of her one and an urban opera code and one standing in front of the cabin in the mine. And I thought, how does a woman go from point A to point B? How, how does a life go like this? And, and also the fact that she wrote down these dreams, which people were doing that, I mean, now there are dream journals and dream groups and, but, Freud’s interpretation of dreams I think was 1896, something around there, it was published. I don’t know whether she read it or not, but it was very unusual that she wrote down these dreams and there were thousands of them, that are in the history Colorado center. So she was a real, and she had some, there are some people, some theologians think she was a mystic. There’s a woman, Judy Nolte Temple who wrote a non-fiction book about Baby Doe Taber and her dreams. And she talked to some theologians and she, she had a lot of visions of Jesus and Mary and saints. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:54] Oh, wow. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:19:55] Other people think she was crazy. And 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:58] What was that like to take that, put it into a book along with that perfection, perfectionism that you have?

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:03] Well, it took a long time talking about the first, the first chapter of that book of that novel of this novel. I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, really the first couple pages I had to get it perfect. And I, that was a mistake because I needed to write to the end and then perfect. So that was the lesson I learned. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:27] Yeah. Because we don’t know what our book wants to have

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:30] Exactly

Rachael Herron: [00:20:30] In the first part until the, until it’s done.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:31] Exactly. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:32] Sometimes not even then. Sometimes it’s right there. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:35] That’s right. That’s right.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:36] Yeah. Oh, wonderful. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:41] Finding synchronicities in research, like 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:46] Yes

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:47] When I pull upon something, I love that. And like in the Thomas Hart Benton book, I- I own one lithograph by Benton. I’m from Kansas City originally and my father was given one of them. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:01] Oh how cool

Donna Baier Stein: [00:20:02] Yeah. So one day I sat down. I had written my first book was a collection of short stories and I thought I want to do something that’s, you know, kind of out of the realm of my daily life and not contemporary. And I started creating a story based on what I saw in the lithograph and that was published in Virginia court that stores in Virginia Quarterly Review. And then I decide, Oh, let’s do some more of these and I happen to own a book of lithographs, by Benton. And one of them, here’s an example of synchronicity and research. One of the lithographs shows two women standing by a flooded river and Benton had titled it The Flood. And it’s 1937. Well, I didn’t know, but there was a very large, very damaging flood in 1937. And, I did research and one of the places that was flooded was New Madrid, Missouri, which was on, and there was a landing that was literally called Compromise. And I remember, I can’t remember the year I wrote that story, but it was the last story I wrote for that book. And at the time, and this is before the day when it’s even more terrible. But at the time I was thinking about the divisiveness in this country. And I see this landing called Compromise and that struck me and there was a church in, in, in the research I found in New Madrid, there was a church that literally sat on a state line and the people from Kentucky sat on one side and the people from Missouri sat on the other and they had armed men with guns at the ends of the pews. Yeah, and I thought, whoa!

Rachael Herron: [00:22:58] Oh my gosh

Donna Baier Stein: [00:22:59] I know, so that really seemed to touch on what was going on and it’s still going on in this country, so that was an example of wow, you know, it was just perfect for a theme that I wanted to explore. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:15] And it’s so interesting when you go looking, you find something that’s just what happens. And the other thing I love about synchronicity is that how it happens all around us and listen things on the radio, and somebody mentions a word that you’ve never heard before you just learned for this book and you hear it four more times that week, you know,

Donna Baier Stein: [00:23:33] Yes, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:34] It’s a beautiful. So can you share a craft tip of any sort with us 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:23:39] One thing that I’ve realized is that, that, is that it’s helpful that it’s something to consider as when you, when a writer is creating a character to at least do one draft in first person. I think writers need to be actors, psychologists, and wordsmiths. And, I, I find that getting into a character writing from that character’s first-person point of view is helpful. It may not stay that way. I may later go change it to third, but it helps me get inside the character.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:19] That is wild. And I love it. I have only gotten one book out of the 26 in first person and it’s the most recent book. And it was, it was really scary in a way to be that close inside her head. That’s fascinating. I love that idea. And I’m going to use that in the future. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:24:42] And 26 books, I’m so impressed. That is amazing. You must be a much more disciplined writer than I am. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:51] I, I have little discipline, but a lot of stamina. I just keep showing up and writing terrible, terrible first drafts.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:00] That’s what, that’s what it takes.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:03] I love that tip. Thank you. Thank you so much. That is completely unique and I’ve never 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:06] I’ll looked for your last book too. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:09] Just came out in paperback. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:11] Okay, great. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:12] Thriller about police corruption. So I don’t know if that’s up your alley, 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:16] Awesome. But wait, for I saw something on Twitter where you a police dispatcher? 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:22] I was. I was a police and fire medical dispatcher for 17 years. So this was the book that was about the dispatcher that I had to get out of the industry in order to write, I haven’t dispatched for a four and a half years, so. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:34] Wow, but you wrote it in first person?

Rachael Herron: [00:25:37] That one actually was in third. The one I just turned in that’s coming out in spring is in first person.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:41] Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:42] Yeah. Yeah. But it was fun. It was really fun. Okay. So what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:25:57] Probably, well, there are two ways I can answer this. One is that, one is that, I sometimes let my emotions get the best of me as, and that affects the consistency of the writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:22] I think that might be a common thing for writers. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:26:24] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:25] And how does it happen?

Donna Baier Stein: [00:26:29] What, in that I, that I have to push myself more to get to the computer or the notebook. And I have to keep myself away from Twitter news and headlines. And again, especially with the pandemic and everything else going on right now, that’s kind of really up, up. And you know, that that’s the negative side, the positive lesson from that is, acknowledge what you’re feeling and go sit there and write anyway,

Rachael Herron: [00:27:06] I’m 48 years old and I’m just learning how to feel feelings. I am not good at it. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:27:10] Oh, I’m too good at it. It’s not, it’s not a plus, you know, so I mean, there’s a balance obviously, but, but I think the thing, I think the thing that’s important is that even if you don’t feel like writing, get out the pen and notebook and start free-writing and say, I don’t feel like writing right now, but and just come out. And again, the classes that I teach, you know, they have, I give them prompts and they have free writing sessions and it’s like silencing that inner critic and silencing that voice that says, I don’t want to do this right now and just doing it. And lo and behold, every time I do that, I feel better 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:56] every single time. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:27:57] Right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:58] It never misses. Sometimes you don’t get anything good out of it, but other times you get gold. You had no idea you could pull from nowhere.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:06] Exactly. That’s right.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:08] Yeah. And no matter what you feel better, my wife always tell- she can tell when I haven’t had a writing day

Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:13] Yes. Yes. Me too. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:18] not feeling emotions, but perhaps I’m good at showing them. Maybe too, too good. Okay. So what is the best book you read recently and why did you love it? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:26] No question about it. The Overstory by Richard Powers. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:30] I love Richard Powers, but I haven’t read that one. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:33] Well this is the first of his that I’ve read and it’s, oh my God. It blew me away. I think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I also really love Lincoln and the Bardo a few years ago, those two books are the best, are two of the best books I’ve ever read. And The Overstory is just a work of genius and I do 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:53] What did you love about it?

Donna Baier Stein: [00:28:55] The way he shows the interconnectedness not only of praise 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:03] Oh I’m so-

Donna Baier Stein: [00:29:04] Oh, it’s all about the environment and trees, have trees take care of each other and the importance. It’s also about video game creation. It’s, it’s I can’t even say what it’s about because it’s so huge. And there are multiple characters, multiple stories. When I first started reading it, I thought I didn’t realize it was a novel and I read the first section, chapter. And I thought it was going to be a collection of short stories and each chapter is focused on different characters, but he mag- he, with a genius touch, he ties every thread together. It, it touches, it’s a consciousness raising book in my opinion, about how we’re all connected about the planet and what we need to do to save it. And, it’s just a mind bogglingly, wonderful book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] I love reading books that make me question my choice of careers. You know, I really, really love it where I am dumped by how someone can be that intelligent and do all of this. Like, that is one of my happy places. So that’s gonna be right underneath your book on my TBR pile. Speaking of your most recent book, can you tell us a little bit more about these stories and the lithographs and how this came to be?

Donna Baier Stein: [00:30:27] Yeah. Again, you know, I, I own one of the lithographs and you know, just having 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:33] Is it nine, is it nine stories? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:30:36] Yes, either eight or nine. Hold on. That’s terrible. Yeah. Nine. Sorry. And it, it was just the first, it was interesting because my first book of short stories people, well, it’s not autobiographical. There are elements of it in it that are all biographical or things from friends’ lives, et cetera. And I really was thinking, I want to write something that’s not related to my life. Well, lo and behold, so I go into this Benton lithograph, which actually, I don’t know. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:26] Oh yeah

Donna Baier Stein: [00:31:28] There on the wall. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:29] Yes, gorgeous. It’s beautiful

Donna Baier Stein: [00:31:30] Yeah. And it’s a two boys on a horse and there’s a gray farm house in the background. And you know, I started just basically describing what I saw and then I started doing some research from Missouri, Missouri in that era and farming, et cetera. And I knew that I didn’t want the main character to be an adolescent boy. So I started thinking, well, there are logs cut, that means there’s an adult around, there’s farmhouse in the back, the parents are probably there and I went into the voice of the wife, mother, and it’s, it’s really her story. So what surprised me was that I mean anything we write our own psyche makes it stamp on it. So it surprised me that that came out in that story. But again, I love doing the research and I love making up a story based on a picture. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:28] I think that is such a beautiful, beautiful, idea plus your, I didn’t know who he was before, I, I love it.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:32:38] He was a regionalist painter from Kansas City and Martha’s Vineyard. He was actually the mentor-teacher to Jackson Pollock. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:45] Oh wow. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:32:46] In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there’s a room full of, I mean, his paintings are in museums all over the world, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s a room, that has murals or on all four walls and it’s called America Today and it shows, there are bankers and farmers and steelworkers and dance hall girls, you know, the, the, the incredible variety of people that make up America.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:16] I love that I would love to be able to go to New York and look at that

Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:19] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:33:20] Wait for us, 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:21] You can Google it and see it’s really, so, so he was, he was a very, he was a very famous paint and 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:31] Plus you have this connection to him through your father. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:34] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:33:35] Oh, that’s beautiful. Okay, and where can we find you online? 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:38] My website is my name, DonnaBaierStein.com. And I also published an interfaith literary journal called Tiferet Journal. That’s (T I F E R E T) TiferetJournal.com  

Rachael Herron: [00:33:53] What is, what does interfaith mean in this specific case? Is it?

Donna Baier Stein: [00:33:56] Well, my father was Jewish and my mother was Christian, so I grew up thinking we all need to get along. And so I publish authors from different faiths.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:05] It sounds like that might be one of your core stories. In your life, is, is that coming together and that 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:12] Yes. I think that 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:13] like, like that church and

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:15] Yes. That’s right

Rachael Herron: [00:34:16] The vision of it being so separated, putting it back together. 

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:20] Exactly. Exactly.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:21] Beautiful. Oh, it is, it is

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:23] Our country needs to do that too 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:24] It absolutely does. It have some fingers crossed for the election. It has been such a joy to talk to you today.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:33] To you too, Rachael. Thank you. And I’m going to get your book and thank you so much for having me on 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:40] Take care. Bye.

Donna Baier Stein: [00:34:41] Have a good rest of the evening or afternoon for you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:44] 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. 207: Donna Baier Stein’s Surprising Tip for Getting Into the Voice of a Character appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 206: Do You Need a Writing Mentor? Or a Pen Name?

Rachael Herron tackles some difficult questions in this mini episode: Do you need a writing mentor? Or a pen name? How DO you write in a year like 2020, anyway? And what’s the best way to hack your way to a productive writing day? 

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 # 206 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased you’re here today is a mini episode where I answer your patron questions. I didn’t have any, and suddenly I have a bunch. So, I will try to go through these as quickly as possible because it’s supposed to be a mini episode, but I want to make sure that you get your questions answered. So let’s jump right in. This will be nice I’ll release this episode today and then a new regular episode tomorrow. I must say really quickly that I apologize that I missed a week, which I was cool with. And then I missed another week because I forgot to upload it to the app. I did upload it on YouTube. If you follow me on YouTube, the Vicki Pettersson episode was live on the day it was supposed to, but a week later a couple of people reached out and said, I hope you’re okay. You’ve missed two weeks with no explanation and I thought, oh no, no I haven’t. And I had, cause I had just forgotten the most important step of putting it on the podcast feed app, that distributed, distributes the show to you. So I do apologize for that, in order to make up for that last week, you got two episodes in one day. Today you’ll get one and tomorrow you’ll get another one. So I hope that that helps and thanks for checking in on me. I really appreciate it. And it’s the only way that I knew that I didn’t upload the episode was because of that. 



[00:01:03] So, okay, let’s start. This is from Giana Floyd. Here is my patreon question, oh yes, I should mention that you get to ask me these questions and I am your mini coach. If you joined my Patreon, Patreon at the level of $5 a month or up, and that’s over at patreon.com/Rachael R A C H A E L. Okay. Giana says, here’s my Patreon question. “2020 is killing me. How do I keep writing? You’re the best.” No Giana, you’re the best. It is so hard right now. It is just so hard, 2020 is in many ways, the worst for a lot of people and you are absolutely not alone when you are feeling this. So thanks for asking that. And the answer is not that satisfying, but it is to just keep showing up. Just keep showing up. I know that sounds easy and facile and I don’t mean it to, but for me, this is what I do. I remember that my goal is to have my words help somebody someday. In some way. And I mean, not whether I’m writing a romance or a thriller or a memoir, or just an essay, all of those can help people in different ways. They can help them get through a rough spot. They can give them inspiration. They can help them choose to live their life in a way that is more fulfilling to them. My words will have a difference in the future and when it’s a very hard day or when it’s a very hard year continually remembering that does help me get to the page. You may want to even make a little post-it, use a Sharpie. So it’s strong and bold that says my words will help. Put it up where you can see it, get to the computer for 15 minutes, I have written, I always say this I’ve written at least two books that were written in 15 minute chunks because my year was so hard or I was depressed or dealing with other the life events that I couldn’t give my work more priority than that. And you know what? The books are good. They got written and I’m proud of them. And they were written first drafted in 15 minute chunks. 



[00:03:58] Usually for editing, I need usually about at least 30 minutes to get deeply into it. But yeah, you just, you just show up, you show up more stubbornly than ever. There is nobody more stubborn than a stubborn writer, and Giana that is what you are. If it’s just for 15 minutes a day, write some terrible words. Again, give up any hope of making them good. If you go to the page in a good year and hope that your words will come out of you, good and strong, and beautiful, you will let yourself down. In 2020, it’s 10 times worse. So, and that’s hard. I understand it’s really hard to let go of the need for your words to be good, but a first draft word, shouldn’t be good. They should be crap. And you can close the computer when you’re done writing crap and say, Hey, I wrote crap for today. That’s my job as a writer, when I come back and do some more tomorrow, eventually you’ll be in revision and you’ll be cleaning them up and that is so fun. But to get the writing done, you just show up, remembering that you really, really will help somebody else and that is everything. So, I hope that helps you a little bit with this terrible year. 



[00:05:14] Okay. May asks, she said- this is kind of a big one. “How do you feel about writing mentors? How does someone find a published author willing to take the time to read their book and give feedback? When is a good time to go, looking for a mentor? When, what should one look for in a mentor? Is it even a good idea? Help!” Says may. So the first time I read this, I thought, oh, no, I don’t know where one would find a writing mentor. How do you even do that? And then May, you will be unsurprised to learn that like a week later I was like, oh yeah! it wasn’t a mentoring program. And I was a mentor and it was awesome. So I think the answer for this is if you want a writing mentor, find a program that is offering writing mentors. The one I did; this was probably six or seven years ago. I don’t remember what it was called. And I got paired with two beginning writers and one write- and we didn’t, I didn’t read their work that wasn’t part of it. Most published writers usually don’t have time to read and, you know, give feedback and edit a whole another book but they can encourage you to do the writing. So I was encouraging these two young women and we were, we emailed a couple of times a week and we were just talking about the process of writing and one of them, I honestly, I hope she’s not listening to this show because I’ve forgotten her name and that is embarrassing, but I forget names, but another one is Courtney Gillette and we are good friends now and I have hung out with her in New York where she used to live, when she just moved. And we became good enough friends that when she finished her memoir, we were not mentor-mentee related anymore. Oh, we were just friends and I said, send me your memoir and I read it and it was beautiful. And I didn’t have any feedback to give her. She’s an incredible writer. She was a better writer of non-fiction than I was at the time I was learning from her. I really pivoted and learned how to, I learned a lot about writing essays from her skill. And that was just because we were friends. So I’ve never been in the mentor relationship of actually looking at other people’s work in that kind of way. And I but I do know that some programs will offer it. I would just Google writing mentor-mentee and see what comes up. 



[00:07:35] Generally, like I said, reaching out to authors who are currently writing, that’s a hard one the, there, most of them will say, Oh God, no, not another obligation I can’t do it. The best is to be able to hire an editor. I always say that. You will learn more from having your work edited than you will in any other thing that you do. Actually, having your words edited by a strong editor is honestly the way to go. If, and if you want to do that, I always recommend Reedsy.com. My students have gotten the best editors from that site and there’s going to be more editors available on there. Simon and Schuster is up for sale, again, they’re one of the big five. So we’re looking at possibly going down to the big four for traditional publishing. There’s talk that Penguin Random House might buy it, which, wouldn’t be surprising. Either Penguin bought Random House or Random House bought Penguin or Bertelsmann who owns them both, but in, so everything is contracting again in publishing with the pandemic, which means that more of those editors will be available for freelance hire. And guess what? The only thing I remember from economics is the supply and demand. The more supply you have, the more inexpensive these things will be. So I predict that editing rates might go down a little bit. They’re generally between 2 and 3 cents a word for developmental edit, editing. I don’t, you know, I’m probably wrong about the prediction. I am not an economist. Probably won’t go too much below 2 cents a word, but there’s going to be more of them out there and really, really qualified people. So, I don’t have a good answer, May for the mentor question. However, I will say that I got a lot out of being a mentor because I got a really good friend and Courtney Gillette actually has a sub stack email that she sends out once a month on the first of the month. And I get so much out of being on her list. So I recommend that you Google her, find her email and sign up where she talks about writing. She talks about life. She’s a beautiful, beautiful essay writer. So that is my recommendation. 



[00:09:48] Okay, this is from Maggie. And she says, please edit this as I am having a hard time articulating. No, Maggie, you said, you said all of this beautifully, a follow up on a previous episode where you talked about the importance of having diverse characters in books. Agreed. There’s also a bigger conversation asking white people to take a step back from inhabiting the bodies of BiPAP people as main key protagonists for a variety of reasons, all valid. If you want to write a series, how do you balance both of these things? I could change the group so that they are not diverse and I’m only writing white main characters as I go through each of their stories in parentheses, “boring”. I could write the main characters of color, despite the ask from the community not to, which is risky and possibly disrespectful, or I can toss the series idea and write a standalone, which will have some grieving. I like their stories and had hoped to share them. Advice? Super huge question. You guys are asking really hard questions this time, huge question. I have been thinking about this a lot. I always think about this a lot, but I’ve been thinking about it even more since I put out that show and got some, some mighty, mighty big push back from it, which is absolutely fine. We should be writing diverse characters. We should be writing them in our worlds. We are surrou- many of us are some people who live in a more homogenous society, perhaps are not surrounded by a diverse, a diverse group of friends. 



[00:11:22] However, Maggie, I know where you sit and where I sit, my friend group is diverse. And so it is naturally, it is natural for me to write a diverse group of people which actually reflects the society in which I live. I have heard one black writer, who a female, who was, and I, I don’t want to say her name because she’s actually had some controversy recently, so I don’t want to bring that into it. But she has said, look, if you want to write a black character, just don’t write about her blackness. Like don’t write about her journey through understanding her black identity, because you have no clue how to do it, make her a black woman with all of the things that her personhood, that her femalehood imply use those, but definitely go down, don’t go down the race aisle cause you are not equipped to do it. And I, I honestly liked that version, of talking about this. So if that helps you feel a little bit more comfortable, it’s actually made me feel a little bit more comfortable to perhaps someday write a main character of color. Although I am not ready to do it yet. And I don’t know if I ever will be. Maggie, I know your series and I know the, the, the, the premise behind it, and I adore it. And I honestly think that if you wrote perhaps the first two books, and this is me guessing, this is Rachael guessing out her ass. I do not know what I’m talking about here, but this is my guess. I’m guessing that if you wrote the first two books in the series with white main characters, as you are white, and then in the third book, perhaps if you were bringing a main character who is another race, do all the things you need to do get multiple sensitivity reads. Do the author’s note that says I am white, whatever I get wrong in this book about this main character’s experience, these are my mistakes and my errors and own that. But I would say play with it, try it if that is what you want and, and be brave. I would love to hear what you think to this, to what I’m saying here, Maggie, it is a very, very large question. 



[00:13:46] If anybody wants to come by, HowDoYouWrite.net and also try to answer this the way you would answer this for Maggie, we always appreciate that. So Maggie, keep your eye on the comments over there. Okay and you had another question. Let’s see. Second question, when using programs like Grammarly or Edit Pro, which is the one I have, they have so many reports it is overwhelming. Are there certain ones you use and ignore others? How do you trust your instinct that a sentence is right for your voice, even if it is wrong by their editing standards? I am such a rule follower. LOL. Thank you for all you do. Okay. So really great question. I’m so glad you asked it. I’m not familiar with Edit Pro, but I’m sure it’s like every, all of the other ones I used to use Grammarly and I switched to Pro Writing Aid, which I love. It is stronger, more robust than Grammarly. I highly recommend Pro Writing Aid or perhaps Edit Pro, which is the one you have, but they all do the same thing. They tell you that this sentence is in passive voice. They tell you that you missed a word here. They tell you that this is spelled wrong they tell you that you have echoes that you use the same words over and over again. Those are all things to be looking at but I want to just say it right here for everybody to feel better. I just put something through Pro Writing Aid this morning, and this is what I look for. I let it catch my spelling errors. I really let it catch my doubled words or my left outwards. I think so quickly. And I type really quickly, but I don’t type as fast as I think. So my bugaboo, my personal bugaboo is always leaving outwards. I can leave two or three sentence, two or three words out of every other sentence, honestly, that happens to me so much. So it helps me with that. It does flag the passive voice.



[00:15:34] However, sometimes you just need to use the passive voice. That is how this sentence wants to be constructed. It’ll flag echoes that are intentional, that I set up to repeat for a particular sound for my writing voice. So those are basically what I look at. I look at spelling, missing words, or doubled words. I tried to clean up and clean up some of my passive voice. And it will also sometimes point out dumb things that I can just leave out. A lot of times you can leave out the word that you put into that, but it can be taken out all of those other suggestions that it gives me, I do not care about. I don’t care. Every once in a while, I will look through the things that it says, you know, you may want to use a thesaurus to look at this word. Is this word too simple? You might not want to use the word small. What about tiny? It’ll suggest. What about minuscule? No, I want the word small. That’s- that’s what I want. That’s what my voice wants. So I, I ignore 93% of what those programs can do and just use it for what, my where, where I am not as strong. I can’t, I’m never going to see my own typos and I use them more for fixing typos and I would say, trust your instinct that the sentence is right for your voice. Even if it flags it as wrong, you may be using fragments of sentences in dialogue. It’s going to flag that as wrong. No, that’s how we speak. That’s how we talk. We don’t want everybody to speak perfect grammar checked English. That’s not realistic. And also the voices of our main characters have their own way of speaking, we want that voice to come through. You get to trust that if you look at it, suggestion and go, no, I want it the way it was 100% stick to that. So if, Maggie, when you are feeling like you need to follow rules, just follow Rachael’s rules. And I’m going to tell you right now, I’m giving you permission to ignore 97% of what your grammar checker recommends for you and just do the things that are underlined in red and pick and choose from the other ones. There’s way, way, way, way, way too much information on those things. And we don’t need any of it, except for the important things. So I hope that that helps. 



[00:17:53] Okay. Ellen says, I have a question. I realized this is probably my decision, but I’d love your perspective. I’m looking through each section to see if I put any, don’t forget to add notes and adding some extra stories. Is this revising? Is my first draft done? Does it matter? Is there a reason for me to decide first draft is done and I am now revising? Does it matter if I don’t state that? Okay, Ellen, you’re totally right that this is your decision and you do not need to follow what I do, but I personally like to finish writing and then I say, the end! First draft done. Your first draft Ellen is definitely done. If you are going back to add those kinds of things in. And then I like to start with my second draft and I do the things I talk about. I think the revising episode of the show is episode 103, just, just Google, how do you write revising? and it will come up and you can follow my steps. If you would like to do that to start your big second, makes sense draft your book will not be perfect after the big second draft, but it will at least have all the scenes in the right places. Things will hang together. You’ll trust that the scenes that are there, you’re going to keep instead of the scenes that you needed to pull out and move or get rid of entirely, because they don’t support your character arc or your theme or what you’re going for with this plot. So yes, you are ready for starting that second draft, maybe making yourself a little sentence outline, make it, maybe make an, a sentence outline map, maybe doing some posting of these ideas and then jumping in from the beginning and starting to take your book apart so that you can put it back together again in a better form that makes it stronger. And I know that sounds scary, but it is doable, break it up into bite sized pieces, check out that episode, which is just the revision chapter from my book. How- Fast Draft Your Memoir. Fast Draft Your Memoir, I really titled it poorly because it should be Fast Draft Any Book You Ever Want to Write. And that tells you everything I know about writing, that tells you everything I know about revision in that one chapter. And again, it is available for free in audio, on I think it’s podcast either 103 or 109 of this show.  So I hope that helps. Congratulations on finishing your first draft, and I hope that you have a blast revising. I honestly believe that’s where the fun lives. 



[00:20:21] So good question. Thank you. All right. Josh Kylan says I was hoping for some advice or maybe, you know, a resource to point me towards. I’ve been writing as a hobby off and on since 2011 and I’ve developed a diverse back catalog from kids’ books to sci-fi novels, to travelogues, parenting books and more. There’s even a series of Minecraft books that somehow have survived Microsoft’s wrath. I’d like to make this more of a business and it seems like all these different styles and genres would be confusing to readers. My question is, should I break these out in to pen names now? And if so, any tips on doing that? I appreciate your advice on this. Okay. So Josh, there are multiple voices that are going to tell you to do different things. And here is what I think. I think that the differing, the different pen names used to be really, really important back when Amazon’s algorithms couldn’t quite tell what people the difference between their different genres. However, the algorithm on Amazon particular, because that’s what sells the most books. And that’s what we look at has gotten so strong that when you look at my romance books, the suggested books that people might like to buy are all romance books. When you look at my non-fiction about writing, the suggested books are books about writing, and those are in the same name, Rachael Herron. My women’s fiction are under the same name, and those will recommend women’s fiction. What else do I write? My memoir underneath that, it will recommend memoir. So I really believe that the algorithms are more robust now, and it is much easier to keep just one pen name. There are exceptions to this. Your publisher may ask you to take a pen name, like when I went to Penguin for the thriller, they just wanted me to have initials. so I am R.H. Herron for thrillers, is still my name. 



[00:22:18] However, it is separate and it requires having a separate entity on Amazon, which is a pain, but my publisher still thinks that it should be separated by thriller, sorry, by genre. So that’s what we did. That was part of their request when I signed the contract with them at the very beginning of working with them. Another thing to keep in mind is how disparate are these genres, if they’re all fiction, which mine are not but if they’re all fiction and fiction that could bring crossover readers, then I recommend keeping your name the same. However, I have had friends who write sweet Amish romance and which is, which is like so clean that there’s often not a kiss. Right? And then the same person also writes incredibly steamy, hot erotica. So those pen names cannot cross. Those, she cannot be known as both. Those are separate names and they are secret. Oh, another thing, the third thing that people do is they’ll have pen names, but it’s an open secret, which is kind of what it is. It’s not kind of, it is exactly what I do. I am R.H. Herron and Rachael Herron on all social media. My publisher asked me to set up separate social media accounts for R.H. Herron and I, like Maggie am a good rule follower and that, and that I just balked. I cannot, I cannot, I cannot do- I can, I can’t do Facebook the way I should. I cannot do it twice for two different characters, two different writers. So on all my social media, it says both names. So it’s a very, very open secret people can find all of my books, which I think is really great. I mean, if you R.H. Herron thriller, and you want to see what I write, you can figure out real easily that I’m Rachael Herron and perhaps you don’t want my romances, but you do want one of my darker women’s fiction or mainstream books.



[00:24:11] So again, it’s not that helpful, but you get to make that choice. So you were talking about sci-fi novels, travelogues, parenting books, and more with the Minecraft. I think a lot of people in your position might think, might divide. So maybe Josh Kylan does the fiction and Josh X. Kylan, whatever your middle initial is, does the nonfiction. That’s a nice way to separate it and could be one of those open secrets people can know that you write both. The question is what are you drawn to? What do you want to do? The algorithms are better. However, oh, what’s his name? Chris Fox who writes really great books about writing. And he’s an awesome person. I buy all his books on writing and I still get Amazon recommendations for his, science fiction when it comes out. So the algorithms are better, but they’re not perfect. So I can’t, I can’t give you a clean answer on this either, but I would love to know what you are drawn toward. There’s, there’s much less should than there used to be. The should used to be yes, pen names all the way. But that is kind of disappearing. So yeah. I wish you luck in that decision and good for you for making this more of a business. As you said, this is, these are business decisions and you’re thinking about them clearly deeply. There’s no right or wrong, at this point, it is what you choose to do. Good question.



[00:25:40] So last question is from Katrina. She has two questions. Okay. So the first one is, “Do you have any advice on outlining within a memoir chapter? I’m very clear on the book outline, but thinking more now about what I say should hit with each chapter. I did J. Thorn scene writing challenge, which included a very useful framework, but wouldn’t always fit easily within memoir or would it?” So great question. I love J. Thorn’s system and he talks a lot about conflict choice and consequence. What’s going on within a scene at the scene level. Hugely important to think about, especially when you’re writing fast paced fiction, fiction that needs to turn pages that needs to keep the reader glued to the page. But I will admit, and I’ve told him as much that my scenes are personally for me, they’re a little bit more organic. I definitely look at every scene when I’m in revision, not in a first draft, but when I’m in revision, I make sure that they are doing something very specific. Is there conflict in this scene? Does my character make a choice, that makes things either better or worse? Hopefully worse. Is there a consequence to this choice that she makes? However, I don’t always get all of those things into the same chapter. Sometimes I can do a conflict and a choice and have the consequence pop up later in the book. Sometimes it’s not so much of a choice as a change, a decision to change something and try something new, which might lead to the character either in memoir or fiction, which are exactly the same to me which might lead the character to moving forward but then sliding backwards. Basically, we want to make sure that every scene is doing something more than just moving the plot along. Plot is important. Things that are happening in your book are important, but we also need to show character development. We need to show character growth we need to show how the external plot is working on the internal change that’s occurring within the main character or characters. So my answer to this is if your scene feels to you organically correct as it is, and it stands as a good scene or chapter, then I say, let it stand. Let it be that. The only thing that I will often do, pretty, pretty late in my books is I will go through and look at the end of every chapter, and make sure I ask some kind of question and I’m using the word chapter to be the same as seen in this because in my books, my scenes are chapters, so it’s easier to discuss. 



[00:28:28] So at the end of the scene, am I opening a tiny, tiny loop, a tiny question that makes my reader turn the next page. It does not have to be a cliffhanger. It doesn’t have to be anything huge and dramatic, but is there a tiny question- question that is raised that is going to continue to pull my reader through the book? And again, I do that very late it’s very systematic oftentimes it just entails moving the last three or four paragraphs from the scene to be the first three or four paragraphs of the next scene, because I can ask that tiny question that gets that one page turned and then they’re into the next chapter. So, what I’m saying again, as apparently, maybe perhaps this is the theme of this show is trust your gut. Trust your instinct. If you’re scene feels right, then it is right. And let it be right. You don’t have to cross off lots of boxes unless you really, really enjoy that kind of challenge. So, thank you for asking that also her last question, last question of the show is, I am looking also for all the hacks to turn a free day into a productive writing day. So I love this. I know that Katrina is a mom. And when she says a free day, ooh, she is going to utilize that. 



[00:29:48] So for me, the number one thing lately has been, and this really kind of ebbs and flows in my life there are times when I am a great writer, no matter what, and by a great writer, I mean, I’m great at showing up and doing the work no matter what’s happening, no matter what is on my desktop, my screen, no matter what’s pinging, I can just write, there are times in my life where that has happened. However, lately, and it might be 2020, I can’t. If I show up to the laptop and I start writing and I am still online, unless I am in inside. Rachael Says Write insides, inside the zoom room with other writers. If I’m on my own and the internet is on, I get lost. I just somehow end up Googling something, asking a question. Following bunny trails. Oh, might as well check email. Oh God. I forgot to do that one thing in email, I’ve got to do that really quick. I’ve got to get this back to the student. I forgot about that. I better go check Slack. So 2020 has really gotten me back on the train of writing with the internet off and the phone, not within my grasp. It doesn’t have to be in the other room. A lot of times, if you’re watching me on the screen on YouTube, I will just throw it onto the couch over there. It lands on the couch. I cannot reach it easily without getting up, which reminds me that when I reached for my phone automatically I go, oh, I’m not looking at my phone right now. I can’t reach it. For me it involves choosing how much time I’m going to spend on writing for the day or, or whatever work you’re working on and then a really productive day for me when I go deep work like this, is 45 on, 15 off, which means I set a timer. I have a timer for my computer, or you could even use like an old egg timer or whatever you have around the house. And I set it for 45 minutes, which is a perfect chunk of time for me. I work, work, work head down right around 45 minutes. I’m starting to get a little bit tired, the timer goes off. I get up. I try not to go back online. That 15 minutes is for a snack. I’m making another cup of coffee, for going to the bathroom, for letting the dogs out, for doing the things that life involves. If I, if I actually go onto my email or Slack, I might not ever get out. So I try to stay away from there until all of my cycles are done. I usually do three or four cycles, a 45 fifteens. And then that is my deep work for the day. And then the rest of the day, I can spend doing all the email and Slack and those kinds of things that keep our writing lives going. For me, that is a productive working day.



[00:32:19] So, butt in chair, hands on keyboard, nothing else open on your computer, no internet, you will, if you stay in place, eventually you get bored enough to work on your document. It used to be a lot easier when we could go to cafes. We can’t go to cafes where we are, probably where you are Katrina, in Denmark, you probably can go to cafes that is helpful because then you can’t wander away and, you know, do dishes or something. Something that has been really interesting for me lately is thinking about managing the way my body moves. And I know that sounds weird, but I’ve always had a really, really difficult time with sleeping for many, many years. Insomnia has plagued me and I heard on a sleep medic- meditation, this person said, pretend you are asleep and don’t move your body. Don’t allow your body to move. Pretend you’re asleep and you’ll eventually fall asleep. And I thought, well, that is bull. That is not going to work. And I am a flipper. Basically I am like a rotisserie chicken in bed. I just roll and roll and roll and roll and I’ve timed it. It’s like every 15 to 20 seconds. I moved something or somehow I, I can roll a 360 in under a minute and get comfortable about four times in that minute, but then get uncomfortable and then roll again. So I’ve been doing this thing in sleep where I lie down. I get as comfortable as I can. I put my arms and legs in one position. Look at myself on the camera and then I try to freeze myself there. I try not to move. I pretend I’m asleep and you guys, then I go to sleep. Apparently, if you rotisserie chicken all over the bed, that’s part of not going to sleep. I’m never letting my muscles relax to get to sleep. And the reason I’m saying this is gluing my butt in the chair.



[00:34:18] How many times have we heard butt in chair, hands on keyboard? But when you make that decision to put your butt in the chair, hands on keyboard, you can’t touch anything else. You’ve moved everything else out of your way. You can’t open anything on your screen, except for the document that is in front of you, you cannot look up one thing. You can’t research anything. If you have a research question or something that pops up to you, you write it down because in 45 minutes you can look up whatever you want. If you are allowing yourself to look at the internet to ask these things, or you can do it after your sessions, glue your butt into the chair. Just like I glue my whole limbs to the bed to stay still, even though it’s not comfortable, it works, butt in chair, hands on keyboard works. So, I hope that that helps Katrina also, rewards. Reward, reward, reward. Whenever you have a productive day of any kind reward for me, it is always reading whatever I want. Sometimes it is a little bit of TV, but I can’t do any of those things until I get my work done. So, reward yourself and I know being a mom has gotta be 400,000 times harder than anything I can imagine. So mad respect sent your way. Also, Katrina is an amazing editor and copy editor. And she was just working with me on my book. And I’m going to give you her website right now because you need to know it. Hold on, please I gotta look it up. Okay. Here it is. She does not do developmental editing, but she does copy editing and proofreading. And her site is TheWordBothy.com. Katrina, I don’t know if I’m saying that right, but it is The Word B O T H Y.com and a Bothy or a Bothy is a Scottish mountain retreat, a tiny cottage offering shelter from the elements. If you’re out in a wilderness of language and grammar, come on in and I’ll help you get cozy with your words. Y’all. Testimonial time here. I asked Katrina to go over my traditionally published books, copy edits to see what the copy editor had missed. And she found 34 things. 



[00:36:36] So that’s her eye, I pay her out of my own pocket to proof what is being copy edited and proofed by traditional New York people who are on a salary for doing this. I still pay Katrina to do this as an extra set of eyes. She helps me sleep better at night. She did not ask me to say this but she’s really, really marvelous. And I’m going to trust no one else with my copy edits and proofs from for the future. So get her while you can. Yes. So anyway, that was fun. Thank you so much for all the questions, everybody. If you would like to have me answer any of these questions for you, you can always join up at patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) and pledge at the $5 and up level. I love answering them. I love being honest with you when I don’t have a good yes or no, do this answer sometimes I know to tell you, yes, this is the right thing to do. You should do it this way. And a lot of times I don’t, but I hope that I provide you with some context and some things to think about so that you can make up your own mind on these really awesome questions and decisions that we have to make because we are writers. So I am honored by you asking them. I am also very honored that you are listening in 2020 when everything is awful. And I’ve stopped listening to most podcasts because I never drive any more. So the fact that listening to this one really makes me feel wonderful and I am so grateful for you. Please reach out and tell me what you think about anything you can always go to HowDoYouWrite.net  or reach me wherever I am online, which is mostly on Twitter these days. So happy writing to you, my friends, and we will talk soon. 

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.

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At the Beach House

In early February of this year of the pandemic, I went to Austin for a writing conference. There, I had my own hotel room. It was a small con, and I didn’t know many people. Add that to the fact that I’m naturally an introvert, I ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel room by myself. That’s normal for me. I read a whole book. Room service brought me exactly the food I wanted, like the magic that room service is. 

I do regret a few things about that weekend, though. 

First, I regret that I spent time with the cool kids, and my brain let me reach for a joint that blew (ha!) almost two years of sobriety. (I won’t rehash (ha x 2!) that incident here – you already read about it if you’re a Patreon member. But very quickly, weed was never my big problem, and I do still use cannabis for migraines. But I don’t use substances for mental escape/mood regulation anymore, and resetting my sobriety date was a big blow.) 

Second, I simply regret that I spent time socializing at all at that conference. If you’d told me that that weekend would be the last time I’d have a space all to myself for almost a year, I wouldn’t have left the room except to do the teaching I was contractually obligated to do. 

No, screw that, I might have just barricaded myself into my room and pretended I only spoke French if they pounded on my door. 

I came home from that trip three hundred and eighteen days ago. I counted. 

I haven’t been alone since then, except for the rare hour or two when my wife goes grocery shopping. 

When Lala and I got married and moved in together, we had one condition on a house: It had to have three bedrooms, one for us, one for her office, and one for mine. We both don’t just like to be alone, we need it. To make that happen, we bought a tiny bungalow in a rough part of town, but we got those three small rooms. 

Pre-Covid-19, she worked out of the house most days. That gave me enough quiet time. I had weekly band practice that left her alone for long hours, and I left the house often at night, going to meetings and seeing friends. 

Not now. 

Now she’s always an irritated yell away. (I saw a tweet recently that said something like “Marriage is yelling What across the house for the rest of your life.”) 

I also know we’re not unique in not having alone time. It seems like the world of people I love is split neatly into two factions—the single people who would do almost anything (except risk death, sensibly) for a few minutes of full-body contact, and people who aren’t single who’ve been cheek by jowl for almost a year now. We don’t have kids. We’ve been in our bubble, alone, and honestly, it’s been good overall. We’re incredibly privileged—I already worked from home, and her transition to working from home was easy. 

Also, I love her. I’m in love with her. She’s sexy and fun even when she thinks she’s not, and she’s my person and I’m hers. 

Honestly, the fact that we’ve done so well is a big reason we’re moving. Now we know we can go long, long periods of time with no one but each other, without either of us going for the jugular or even a superficial vein. 

And still. The fact that we haven’t had a blow-out-someone-leaves-the-house-crying fight in this last year is purely a product of me not drinking anymore, I know it. I know that I love her more than I ever have. And I also know that she bugs me more than she ever has, too. I’m one hundred percent positive she feels the same way about me. 

But now, right this very second? 

I’m in a borrowed beach house on the coast that belongs to one of my best friends. 

This is not the beach house I’m in because that would be some privacy malarkey, but this is what it’s like here.

Yesterday, while I was tramping along the cliff edge, watching a storm roll in, I realized (again) that no matter how much I love my lovies and desire to be near them, I need alone time to hear what my soul wants to tell me. 

That sounds pretentious and hippy at the same time (two great tastes that taste great together) but I mean it. 

On my three-hour drive to Sea Ranch yesterday, I listened to Mary Karr talking to Tim Ferris about writing, sobriety, and happiness. She talked about being raised an ardent atheist, but how she’s come to pray in sobriety, because it just…works? She mentioned she listens to her Leanings, which I saw in my head with a capital L. On a bad afternoon, instead of killing herself because she’s such a wreck, she’ll have a Leaning that says, “Make a sandwich. Make the biggest sandwich you can and then eat it.” 

That’s what I use quiet time for. To hear the Leanings of my spirit. To catch the whisper of the Knowing that rises from deep within me, from a place right next door to that place where I’ll house that recommended sandwich. 

Until Sunday, I’m listening to the Leanings. I’ll write when I want to. Read when I want to. Eat what I’m moved to eat even if that’s four bowls of cereal, followed by two red velvet cupcakes, followed by a salad as big as my head. 

In the hot tub!

There’s no right way of doing it, and much more importantly, perhaps, there’s no wrong way. Sometimes the Leaning tells me to play no-spend poker on my iPad for a while. Sometimes it tells me to knit and watch the Crown. Sometimes it tells me to sit and write with the end goal of helping someone else someday. 

The Leaning reassures me, helps me to answer the insistent voice that shrieks “Who do you think you are, to deserve this?” 

I can freely admit I don’t deserve to spend quiet time at a beach house. Yesterday, I sat on the edge of the world in my sparkle boots and thought exactly that. The storm was whipping up the waves, sending spray twenty feet into the air. The sound was deafening. 

I didn’t fit in—I was so small, on a rock, on the edge of a country I don’t really understand. How did I deserve to sit right there, just when, when so many are… are not able to do the same thing. 

The truth is: I don’t deserve it. 

And at the same time, I do. 

I do belong here.

I am the waves. I’m the wind. Someday I’ll return to those things, my particles and energy splitting and dissolving and moving elsewhere. 

Therefore, I belong everywhere. 

I do deserve to be here. I deserve to be exactly who I am. 

I am, frankly, a goddamn miracle. 

And so are you. You deserve to be here. To take up all the space you need. To close the door when you need to, whether that’s physically or mentally, to make room for yourself. 

You deserve to make your art, to name a dream of many and move toward it. 

You belong here. You’re a goddamn miracle, too. 

Speaking of miracles, there are 4 deer in this picture, almost completely camouflaged.

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Glitter Boots

When I was a young woman, I loved the wearing purple poem. You probably know the one. In the nineties, it was everywhere – there was a collection of stories made into a book we couldn’t keep on the bookstore shelves. There were posters. The Red Hat Society came about because of it. It was the Mary Englebreit of aging gracefully or, really, with joy. 

In case you don’t know it, here it is. 

I’ve been wearing purple, metaphorically, all my life, but sometimes it was hidden. I made sure that I could see those bright flashes of myself, but I didn’t trust very many others to understand.

During the time of hiding my purple, I dated a man for a while who lived on the other side of a tunnel from me.

On my side of the tunnel was a whole world in all its many flavors. Where I lived, there were taco trucks and cars with bumpers secured with bungee cords and punks who squatted with other punks who loved metal-bluegrass and families with young children who painted with chalk that left the sidewalks and brought their flowers and rainbows onto the streets themselves.

On my side of the tunnel were people shouting and rejoicing out open windows. I could hear three different kinds of music in my backyard, strains of mariachi mingling with soul mixed with a touch of opera. People drove Jaguars and fixies and scrapers and longboards and shopping carts and Ford Pintos.

On his side of the tunnel were gates. Gated communities, he said, were safe. The walls were all gray (except he called them eggshell and pewter and smoke). 

If safety felt like the color gray, I wanted red and yellow and orange and blue and the muddy mix they make when it rains. 

I broke up with him because of that tunnel, because of the way I lost myself when I went through it. He wanted to put me behind a gate, to keep me safe. 

But I wanted to leap. To stretch my arms for things out of my reach. Even if I couldn’t pull what I wanted off the shelf, I wanted the item I desired to tremble as my fingertips brushed it—I’d get there one day. I’d pull it down eventually. 

Silver Fryes

The other day, I painted my old black Frye boots silver. They’d come slightly sparkly when I’d bought them, actually. They were the gated-community version of silver. They glinted in the light, but only politely, only if you took the time to look. 

The silver wore off, though, and while they become my favorite, most comfortable shoe, I missed their sparkle. So I bought a pot of leather paint and took out an old paintbrush and now they are SILVER. They don’t glow – they sparkle. They are vivacious. They greet guests at the door and ply them with liquor even before they step across the threshold. As I stomp my merry stomp, they leave dazzlings of glitter behind. They do not apologize for their joy, for their full-throated shout of pleasure. 

They are even better than purple.

Back in my early twenties, I didn’t know the poem’s title. We just called it the “wearing purple” poem, and it was a shorthand for what we wanted to be someday—free, confident, and most of all, ourselves. 

The title is actually: WARNING. A British poet named Jenny Joseph wrote it in 1961, and it was voted Britain’s most loved post-war poem in 1996. 

But it’s more than just a fun poem about a woman wearing her slippers in the rain (a thing I did yesterday, actually). 

It’s a WARNING about a woman who is about to stop apologizing for being exactly what she wants to be. 

I think Jenny Joseph would approve of my assertively glittering boots. But isn’t that point? I’m not asking her. Or anyone. 

I’m just letting my luminescent feet dance my legs to where I want most to go. 

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Veronika

In the spirit of old times, here’s an actual finished sweater, hot off the needles! Here are the Ravelry details.

Please forgive my styling and ponytail wake-up hair – I was tugging at sweater in front of the mirror, trying to decide how to best wear it, and then I realized there was only one answer: with lipstick. Damn the rest.

I loved making it – SUPER easy and mindless, perfect pandemic knitting. It is, however, almost impossible to photograph. Here are my best attempts.

Yep. Already covered with Clementine hair, even freshly bathed and blocked.

And where it is at this exact moment (at least his hair won’t show):

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In Search of the Drift

“Swimming is an antidote for the existential anxiety from which I suffer.” – Bonnie Tsui, Why We Swim

I’m lying on my back in a heated pool in the dark. My arms and legs move in a lazy frog-like pattern, just enough to keep moving, not enough to take much energy. I’ve been doing freestyle back and forth, and since I’m still really in the learning phase of swimming, I use this elementary backstroke to recover my breath once I’ve done something wrong and run out of air. 

I’ve watched night fall, and the fog above has gone from white to a dark ash. I know that once I pass under the limb of the oak that’s shaped like a ghostly hand, I’m about two feet from the pool’s edge. On the other side, I use my peripheral vision to watch for the second-to-last rail of the fence. Then I give up the backstroke altogether and raise my arms over my head, my fingers waiting to touch the concrete. I remain still, floating, inertia the only thing moving me and that only barely. My lungs lift my ribcage out of the water and then I sink back down as every outbreath makes me less buoyant. 

When my fingertips brush the wall of the pool, I lazily fold myself in half as I exhale. My legs and arms go up, my rear goes down, and I’m under the surface, looking at my own body’s reflection against the top of the water. I take a moment to sink (as much as my already-buoyant body will let me), looking through the pool’s wavering lights. 

Then I do five or six more freestyle laps. I can’t think much about anything, because I’m too busy thinking about the way my body is moving. Oh, that was a good stroke. Yes, that’s how you lift your chin to get maximum air on the right side breath. Damn it, what happened on the left? Was it the position of my arm? What the hell are my legs doing? Quit kicking so hard. Bend your knees less. Glide. 

Every once in a while, I get it exactly right, and I glide while my whole body is relaxed, resting face-down in the top foot or so of water. The very act of holding your breath slows your heart rate, so yes, I’m exercising, but it doesn’t feel like I am. I’m just playing. 

This particular form of play is what I’ve missed most during this shelter-in-place. Yes, I swam last weekend in 53-degree water in the Bay, but that felt more like survival. I fell in love with being in a pool in May of last year. I got a good six months of practice before winter set in and I was too much of a baby to continue swimming, something I deeply regret. I would have been in the Mills pool all winter if I’d known by March I wouldn’t have the chance. 

But now my swim teacher has rented a residential pool in Alameda, and while her lessons feel prohibitively expensive for a person who’s spending a college education on making her old dog Clementine comfortable in her dotage, I can afford my teacher’s “unassisted” lap swim. I take half the pool while she teaches one person in the other side of the pool. 

That means I now, as of last night, get to go through the looking glass once a week. I get to lie under the water and look up. 

As a kid, my favorite, most peaceful moments were sitting on the bottom of the pool, the deep thrum of the water in my ears as everything I looked at appeared different and magical, compared to the way things looked on the surface. I can capture a little of that feeling during meditation, when I release a breath and resist the first urge to take another one. If I wait just a beat, the urge to breathe goes away and I can rest on the bottom of my mind. Of course, just a few seconds later, the urge becomes an actual need and I’m happy to take the next breath. I’m not holding my breath. I’m just waiting for the next one to arise. 

In Why We Swim, Tsui says, “Push through the looking-glass, and you’ll discover a different way of being. This heightened attentiveness—the ballooning of time, or the speeding-up of it; the perception that time no longer matters, or that it matters less than you might have thought—is the kind of flow I’m after. As human swimmers, we can really be the fish. You and I, we know that. We don’t have to remind ourselves that it’s water around us. But we get glimpses of what it’s like to be the fish. We get flashes of forgetting the water. In the forgetting, we can drift.” 

She’s right. Inside that drift is where the flow happens. 

I find it at my desk when I forget that I have a body and that the words on the page aren’t real, when I slip into the book I’m writing and inhabit it so fully that I forget everything else. 

Of course, this drift—this flow—is only realized after you’ve come to. Like a dream, you wake and you remember again where you are. 

Last night, I could have sworn I only swam about twenty minutes before getting tired and leaving, but when I looked at my phone, it had been almost an hour. Normally, I’m preternaturally conscious of time. I wake a minute before my alarm, no matter what time I set it for. If I start a cooking timer, I hear an almost-audible ping in my mind and get up and walk toward the kitchen just before it goes off forty-five minutes later, even though I haven’t been thinking about it at all. My wife thinks it’s a special kind of superpower. Yes, my body and mind understand time, but not when I’m swimming. Not when I’m writing. 

And in this forgetting, the flow of drift is what I chase. 

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