Rachael Herron's Blog, page 13

Ep. 190: Anthony Moore on Capturing Ideas as they Arrive

Anthony Moore is an author, speaker, and one of the top 100 writers on the entire Medium.com platform. In the past 3 years, he’s gone from virtually zero readers, subscribers, and income to 45,000+ Medium followers, 75,000+ email subscribers, and a 6-figure writing business. His book What Extraordinary People Know: How To Cut the Busy B.S. and Live Your Kick-Ass Life (Sourcebooks) hit bookshelves in 2019, and his book Wealthy Writers: How To Go Viral, Get Followers, and Get Rich Writing has been read by hundreds of his writing students through his online courses and coaching. 

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 #190 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Really glad that you’re here with me. Today we’re talking to Anthony Moore, who is, charming and sweet and has some great things to say about how to keep and capture the ideas you get. So many of us have these ideas, assault us wherever we are. No matter what we’re doing and we lose them. I know I do. And it was really great to talk to him. He has a business model that is not like everybody else’s and I know that you’re going to enjoy listening to this smart man. I’m a little slower and I usually am today, a little bit down speed. Possibly, I have been sick. I don’t know if it’s been COVID. I really don’t think it has been, because as basic, because I’m better in a way week. Right, I, the last time I talked to you was pretty much the last time I felt good. So I’ve had this for a week and exactly is the same thing I got in the beginning of March with, all of the symptoms of COVID, but none of them lasting very long. Thank God. Right? So, I don’t know what’s going on, but a week later I am up at my desk for the first time and we’re waiting for my test to come back. However, they said it can be up to 10 days to get the test back. So it’s still just waiting. 



[00:01:44] There’s a part of me that hopes it is COVID just so I can have this assurance that, yeah, no, I’ve had it twice and I’m one of the people that gets it lightly, perhaps. Perhaps this time. I know a lot of people have gotten it twice now. However, this disease is so awful and bad and scary, and I know it mutates and does crazy, awful different things to so many different people. I also don’t want that to be true. I would like to know if we can lift our total quarantine cause right now, we’re not even going to the store when, of course we’re not going to the store. We’re not doing anything. I am not even talking to neighbors out the window right now because I feel weird about it. So yes, we do that in my neighborhood. We do talk to neighbors out the window sometimes. But not right now. And if I don’t have COVID, then I just have bad flu or cold or something like that and I can go back to after well, socially distancing, going to the grocery store, doing things that I enjoy doing, going swimming. I have not gone swimming again in the Bay. I have not even taking a walk in the last week. I’ve just been sleeping like 20 hours a day. So, very glad to be back at the desk, not looking for sympathy, just kind of explaining why my affect is like this today. But today I had a great day, I’ve done 45 minute sessions in revision cause I’m behind. I three, I lost three work- no four work days because of this. And I’m on deadline again for this book, but it’s, you know, a lighter weight deadline, lighter weight revision. So that is okay. And you know what life happens and we can’t always write on the days that we need to, we can’t always write on the days that we want to. I was reminded over at the Writer’s Well of, by Stephanie Bond, who’s awesome. And who filled in for me this week on the Writer’s Well. So if you don’t listen to that podcast with me and J. Thorn, you may want to go check that out, but I was reminded by Stephanie of the serenity prayer that I made for writers a while ago, and it is secular, non-God related. It just opens with the generic, please, please grant me the serenity to accept it when I cannot write. The courage to write when I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. There are many times in my life where I think to myself, I can’t write today. And what, what it is, is, is I just really want to, you know, screw off and watch Netflix or work in the garden or whatever it is that I’m working on. That’s what I’m talking about, the courage to know when I can, the courage to know, you are just procrastinating right now, Rachael. You’re just being a big whiny baby. Sit your butt down in the chair and do some work. You’ll feel better. That’s where I need courage. I also really, really, really need to embrace the serenity that comes with understanding when I can’t do work, I really tried to work when I was sick and my wife just kept rolling her eyes and reminding me, look, you’re sick. You can’t, your brain is not working. I was barely able to speak English. Your brain is not working. You must rest. And I don’t know if any of you are like me, but when I am sick, I am convinced, and this is weird. I’m convinced I’m just being too big a baby, and that anybody else would push through the fever, push through the coughing and get to the desk and do the work. And I’m just a lazy loser slob. And that is an abusive brain pattern that I have. I have, you know, I’ve, I really do struggle with a lot of guilt. Which is dumb. It’s so dumb and I’m not even beating myself up when I say this. I’m saying this gently and lovingly. That kind of guilt is not useful. I am a good person who does good things who feels good about my life choices. I am harming the earth little as possible, except I do eat meat and there’s no reason for me to feel guilt. I have an awesome life, but guilt, guilt is the engine that keeps me trucking along. And I know that and when I am sick, there’s no need for guilt, Jesus Christ. So it’s good to have a wife who is wonderful and reminds me of that and tells me to go back to bed and, and quit being even bigger baby and it’s really good to feel better and be back at the desk. And if you are struggling with illness or if you are struggling with stress or trauma or chronic illness or depression or chronic depression, those are all things. There are days where, you know, in your gut that you have the courage to push past the procrastination and that’s all it is, it’s procrastination. You’re lying to yourself. You can get up and sit in the chair and do 45-minutes work. And then there are other days when you can’t on those days, I’m asking you to give yourself that pass, that I was finally able to give me self this week. That just says, yeah, I need to rest, resting is my job. Whenever I realized that resting is my job, oh my gosh, I rest my ass off. Tell me to do a job. I’ll do a job. And when you tell me resting is a job, I embrace it. But when I think of resting as being lazy, then I get guilty and all of that, you know, the whole cycle starts again. So, if you need to rest my friend rest, like it’s your job, but because it is, and, please do what you need to do right now in these really difficult times to take care of yourself. Please don’t get COVID, please. I hope that everyone listening to me right now is healthy and safe. And I wish those things for you. I also wish, and hope that you are getting your own writing done and that it is filling your soul. Even if you’re writing terrible crap that you absolutely do not believe in, nor do you believe that you are the person who should be telling the story. Those are all just lies that we all are fed by the, the group unconscious that says, no, you shouldn’t write this. Yes. I’m telling you, you should write this. You have to write this. It’s your job also and it’s wonderful and I’m really proud of you. So, reach out to me wherever you can find me on the internet.



[00:08:05] Don’t reach out to me on texts cause my phone just broke. It’s just been one of those days. So, I am very glad to be in this chair. Very grateful for all of you who are listening and, and, and that’s all, that’s all I’m going to end this clumsily. Please enjoy Anthony Moore and we’ll talk soon.



[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: [00:08:42] All right, well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Anthony Moore. Hello, Anthony. 

Anthony Moore: [00:08:47] Hello, how’s it going?

Rachael Herron: [00:08:48] It’s good to have you, let me give you a little introduction before we start. Anthony Moore is an author, speaker, and one of the top 100 writers on the entire Medium.com platform. In the past 3 years, he’s gone from virtually zero readers, subscribers, and income to 45,000+ Medium followers, 75,000+ email subscribers, and a 6-figure writing business. His book, What Extraordinary People Know: How To Cut the Busy B.S and Live Your Kick Ass Life (Sourcebooks) hit bookshelves in 2019, and his book Wealthy Writers: How To Go Viral, Get Followers, and Get Rich Writing has been read by hundreds of his writing students through his online courses and coaching. What brought you to all of this like that- so that was how many years ago did you do this in the past three years? 

Anthony Moore: [00:09:32] Yeah, three years. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:33] What was the motivation behind doing this? 

Anthony Moore: [00:09:46] Oh man. Well, Rachael, I’ve been wanting to write it for a long time. When I got to college, my construction business owner dad, wanted me to be an engineer or some kind of like, you know, working with, with, with my hands, like he did, but I took a creative writing class and I just fell in love and I was like, I have to be a writer. So I became an English major. I got all the laughs, people followed me, all those lists of like worst majors to get, you know, like anyone who’s an English major knows that. Right. But ever since I was in college, I wanted to be a writer. And so for several years, four or five years after college, I tried to be writer and I just basically failed at everything. I mean, I, I tried everything you were supposed to try. I had a blog, I was paying a lot of money for like hosting fees and like constantly redesigning my website for some reason, trying to guest posts and like figure out advertisements and like, nothing was working. I made like 40, 50 bucks total after like five years.

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

Anthony Moore: [00:10:30] So, the past three years, everything changed. And I really just changed my whole mindset on how I approach my business. And before basically I was just treating myself like a casual blogger who wrote every few weeks and didn’t really do much. But changed it until like looking at it as a business, like how can I treat myself as a professional top tier writer? Like what were like the top paid authors and speakers and coaches and writers doing? And I should do that. So, just really saw a huge growth in the past few years. So it’s been a long time dream. I tell my wife every day. I mean, I’m so thankful for this life. I mean, I, I used to work in telemarketing. I was doing all kinds of crazy odd jobs or horrible, always wanting to be writer. So I finally made it thank God. I’m so grateful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:09] I have been a full time writer for four years now, and I am the same way. Grateful every single gosh, darn day that I get to do this kind of thing. So where does the actual writing, fit into your day. Talk, talk to me about your process of writing. Writing, kind of the new work or the revision of the work.

Anthony Moore: [00:11:27] Yeah, sure. So, like what you mentioned in my intro, thanks for that, I am a top writer on Medium.com, which if listeners don’t know what that is, this is a big writing hub. You can talk about all kinds of stuff, you know, politics, tech, social issues, whatever and I’ve kind of built my platform on medium. So I post two or three articles a week, and frankly, they’re only about maybe 1500 words, not that long, maybe 5, 10 minute reads and I’ve been doing that for several years now. And just the consistency, I think is the backbone of my writing period, you know, and 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:00] And nowadays, people get paid to write on medium, right? If you get a certain number of readers, how does that work? Or certain number of blocks? Or?

Anthony Moore: [00:12:07] Yeah. They actually changed the algorithm a lot, which is a little frustrating, but yes, they do pay you based on how long people read your articles.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:16] Oh, how you try to get them through. Yeah

Anthony Moore: [00:12:07] So, it used to be flags, it used to be views. It’s just like the read ratio who reads the whole thing and you get paid based on that. So it’s a great platform if you’re looking to make money as a writer, they can pay you starting immediately. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Yeah. Fascinating. Okay. So, and how do you get that done? Are you a first in the morning kind of guy or are you late in the evening writer?

Anthony Moore: [00:12:38] You know, I have spent a lot of time figuring this out because as writers, this is our bread and butter. Like, how do you write the best, right? And I’ve written when I had a 9-5 and I’ve written as a full time writer myself. And basically what I found Rachael, is that, different things work at different times for me, like I used to wake up at 5:00 AM every single day. My wife and I were teaching English abroad in South Korea, super crazy. It was like language barrier and food and culture. And it was so busy, but every single day I was writing at 5:00 AM. It was awesome. But then I moved back here and it’s like, Hey, I can sleep in. I don’t need to do that. So it’s like, whatever my life becomes it’s like I write around that. So now it’s like my whole basis of writing, Rachael, it was just writing a little bit every day, small progress every day. And that’s how I’ve written my, my two books, how I’ve made huge online courses. It’s like when I have these deadlines and like word counts of the day, that really stresses me out. I feel like I’m already falling behind if I’m not feeling that day, whatever. But if I can just write a little bit, all the time, eventually I looked down and it’s like, wow, I’ve written a book. I like, I’ve written a whole book. I’ve written five articles like this week, and they’re all really great. So it’s just small progress every day for me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:47] Do you, any of your articles end up in your books? Do you kind of collate them in or are the books completely standalone from the articles? 

Anthony Moore: [00:13:55] No, they actually pretty connected. And I studied a lot of like bestselling authors and figured out how to write, you know, and a lot of it is like my kind of like rise to where I am now, it’s like I work a lot, I had a couple of articles that really, really hit, like, you know, really, really big semi viral articles. And it’s like, that works. Let’s focus on writing this kind of concept and for like a book. And it just connects into the business of my writing. So any online courses I have, or coaching I offer, or other books I’m making it, it’s like everything is mentioning everything else. So it’s a big cohesive connection that really fits, across the board. You know.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:30] Yeah. That’s really smart. I write in five different genres. So I, I, I screwed the pooch on that one. That’s not what you want

Anthony Moore: [00:14:40] It’s hard to connect all to that

Rachael Herron: [00:14:42] to do. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Anthony Moore: [00:14:44] Oh, that’s a good one. Good question. You know, I think as writers, I’ve stumbled on this, this writing style that worked, you know, it’s like short, clear, concise. If you read my writing, it’s like pretty brief blunt. It’s like lean meat, you know? and, and like that work and it’s like, I tried for years, I finally found something that works, but it’s challenging to break out of that once you establish yourself as this, this person and I work with a lot of new writers and like I have writing coaching and writing courses and they come to me asking like, oh my gosh, like, I’m so scared. I’m going to get rejected. We’re going to laugh at me. It’s not gonna work. And on the one hand, I want to tell these people, like you’re in a great place because like, and like most loving, caring way, I can say nobody’s reading yet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:30] Yes

Anthony Moore: [00:15:31] So you can do whatever you want and I’m like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:32] nobody’s waiting for you

Anthony Moore: [00:15:33] Yeah. Once you kind of establish yourself, it’s harder to break through a mold. Like, hey, you’re this personal growth guy who like, writes this way. Like, why are you branching out into like in fiction or like, whatever it is. So it’s challenging to adopt new styles, even write a new John Rose. Once I have established myself the way I am now. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:51] Do you want to write in fiction?

Anthony Moore: [00:15:56] Yes and no. You know, like I like write primarily nonfiction, which is great and actually I studied fiction so much. A lot of fiction techniques are in my nonfiction writing, like storytelling, the hero’s journey, a tone, like, like different ways to like structure the article in a nonfiction way. So down the road, yes. But again, it’s like, I have established myself here. It’s hard to break out in like other areas.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:17] Yeah, yeah. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Anthony Moore: [00:16:24] You know; I get pretty vulnerable in my writing. I talk about my history with addiction and my family issues. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] Hey, Hey, I’m a fellow addict here. 

Anthony Moore: [00:16:32] Okay, great. It’s like, yeah, it was great to meet another person to talk through

Rachael Herron: [00:16:36] Recovering. Yeah

Anthony Moore: [00:16:40] I talk a lot about that. I mean, as a kid, I used to stutter and I got bullied and like all these things, I never let, you know, I used to hide in shame for years. Right, and now that I write about it, Rachael it’s crazy seeing how many people email me saying, Hey, I have the exact same thing. Like, what did you do? Like, Hey, I stutter her too. How do you fix that? Or like, Hey, I also have addict issues, like family issues, or I feel so helpless. Like I write about my deepest, darkest struggles. And it’s so rewarding to see people message me like out of nowhere, I’m like, Hey, I found this article. It really spoke to me like one of the best articles I’ve ever read, because it really cut to the core of what I’m feeling. How can I, how can we talk more? It’s like helping them in ways I want to be helped for so long. It’s just, it’s incredible. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:23] It is the best. It is the best. And I really believe that about the more, true we are, when we’re talking about our own shame, the more we connect with the reader. And I swear to God as a memoir writer, I thought I was tapped. And then I really discovered that I was an alcoholic and addict. And, and then there was, you know, it was an awful time to like get sober and do all that stuff. But in the back of my mind, I’m like, yes! More to write about, more to talk about. Yeah

Anthony Moore: [00:17:52] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:53] Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Anthony Moore: [00:17:57] Yeah. What I do is that once I’m in like the momentum of writing, ideas, just, just come to me, you know, and if you stop for even a little bit, it’s like the whole process kind of dies really quickly. I mean, I, I read Stephen King’s book on writing, I’m sure a lot of listeners have, and he mentioned something like he like stopped writing for two weeks. And it felt how much harder it was to start again, right? So the craft tip I have, is a, once, you’re writing a lot, which is a given, you should be writing all the time, right? Start writing down these ideas that come to you. And for me, I use an app called Evernote was just like one of those mini generic note taking apps, but like I’m walking the dog, I’m in the car, like I’m going to a stop light. This, this headline pops into my mind like this, this idea and I write it down. And I feel like if you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it. But the more that you like writing it down, it’s like the more things are unlocked. There’s this great kind of like an analogy by, I forgot who it was, it’s a kind of a crew name. It’s called “Idea Sex” And they’re saying like, if you can connect like business with like, you know, arts or like two totally different things, if you connect those, you can make crazy idea babies, like things you’d never consider, but you have to like be listening to these thoughts all the time. And eventually you’re going to make these connections automatically, passively as you’re hanging out in the shower, walk your dog because you’re always thinking kind of like opening up your mind to these things. So I say, write all the time and then write down what comes to mind, because the more you write down, the more it’s going to come to you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:29] It’s, it’s such a thing that I always forget to do that. I always think when I’m walking the dog, that I’m going to save the idea and I’m going to have it when I get home. Not only do I not remember the idea when I get home, but I don’t remember that I had one, 

Anthony Moore: [00:19:40] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:19:41] Not like I get back to the desk and struggle. It’s just, it’s just gone forever. Perfect.

Anthony Moore: [00:19:43] Yeah. I’m like walking the dog like learning how to type as Alicia’s like, oh my gosh, that’s like, hold on. I was like, write this down, you know, I’m good at that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:50] That is good. Voice to text man hit that speaker, man.

Anthony Moore: [00:19:52] You’re right. That’s true. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:56] What thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way? 

Anthony Moore: [00:20:02] Well, you know, I mentioned my, my stories growing up. Before I was trying to be a writer, right. And I actually recall, I wrote this like dumb little article about like, you know, career stuff or something and somebody comment me, Rachael, they said nobody ever commented on my stuff, right? Cause I was like a no name writer. And so I’ll come and it’s like, wow, somebody commented. They wrote, this is the worst article I have ever read my entire life, like period. But that’s it, it crushed me, crushed me. Right. So horrible. And so for years, I’m, I basically made it my subconscious mission to never write anything that could elicit that reaction ever again. And so, Hey, like that happened. Nobody ever commented because nobody ever read any more because it was the most vanilla boring, junk, 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:44] Exactly

Anthony Moore: [00:20:45] You know, non-controversial stuff. So

Rachael Herron: [00:20:47] You can’t make everybody like your stuff.

Anthony Moore: [00:20:49] Exactly. So, when I started writing, like kind of getting back to like these roots of like, Hey, I’m going to make a stand. I’m going to draw a line in the sand saying, Hey, this is what I believe. Here are my stories. Here’s my darkest deepest stuff. Like this is me being vulnerable. Using these things, I never talked about it. Never wanted to talk about like I made a point to hide. When I talk about these things that hugely affects my writing, because that’s what I can bring lots of fiction techniques into like, save myself up as the year’s journey, overcoming adversity, bringing different characters, of tones of voice, dialogue into nonfiction. And so that makes like, just to adds a whole other level on my nonfiction work and really just builds huge rapport with my audience and me who have gone through the same thing. So not hiding those dark stories, but you use them in a way to say, Hey, I’m not perfect. I struggled too, but here’s what I’ve done. And maybe you can benefit from this too. That’s just worked wonders of my work

Rachael Herron: [00:21:36] That’s the kind of creative nonfiction that I love reading the best is when we go into a moment of another person and get to inhabit that with you. Yeah, that’s awesome. What is the best book you’ve read recently?

Anthony Moore: [00:21:50] I read books all the time. I think that’s a huge technique for writers to just get out of your craft. One I just read was the autobiography of Malcolm X. A really intense with just right now with, with the current climate, I want to be more informed as a straight white guy. I’ve had the wind in my sails pretty much since I was born. So I just, just hearing just the side of like black America, especially back then, it was just so eye opening and that’s such a good technique for writers to, and anyone like writers to like were like, Hey, I’ve never considered this before. And like writing characters or just like writing truths and principles. So that was a great book. I also just read, Phil Knight’s autobiography called Shoe Dog. He was a founder of Nike, just again, two great autobiographies that were almost like novels they’re written so well, like you’re like reading for them. And like things happen. It’s like, like you never forget, it’s a true story. So two great autobiographies. I found great just input from reading autobiographies of famous people across the board. It’s just really helpful for me to understanding how people work. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:46] That’s fabulous. Thank you for those two. I haven’t read either of them and I’ve meant to read the Malcolm X forever and thank you for reminding me of it.

Anthony Moore: [00:22:51] Really good, great book

Rachael Herron: [00:22:52] Okay so now, where we can find you and everything that you are doing? 

Anthony Moore: [00:22:57] Yeah. So basically two places first, is just my blog, AnthonyMoore.co  all my stuff is there. And also just I made a free writing training. It’s focused on medium and like how to kind of make money from that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:09] Excellent

Anthony Moore: [00:23:10] So if you go to freelance writer, starter package.com. It’s an hour long free training that talks about how I make my income streams, how to just write great articles. Freelance writers’ starter package.com, free training, check out how to write on media and kind of build-up this writer’s feels.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:22] Fabulous. I want to do that. I want to read that. So I’m going to go sign up for it right now. And I will put it in the show notes for everybody who wants to come by HowDoYouWrite.net and you can find it there. 

Anthony Moore: [00:23:31] Perfect. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:32] It’s been a treat to talk to you, you are really, really 

Anthony Moore: [00:23:35] It was great

Rachael Herron: [00:23:36] You tell your energy and how you are living your life, and you have achieved your wildest dreams. 

Anthony Moore: [00:23:42] I am so grateful. Thank you. It’s great talking to you, Rachael. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:45] Awesome. Thank you. 

Anthony Moore: [00:23:46] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:47] 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. 190: Anthony Moore on Capturing Ideas as they Arrive appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 189: Steven Rowley on When You Get To Call Yourself A Writer

Steven Rowley is the author of The Editor and the national bestseller Lily and the Octopus, which has been translated into nineteen languages. He has worked as a freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and screenwriter. Originally from Portland, Maine, Rowley is a graduate of Emerson College. He lives in Palm Springs, CA.

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 #189 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you’re here with me. Today, I got to talk to the awesome Stephen Rowley whose book, The Editor, I just love and I kind of fan girl a little bit, which is one of those wonderful things to be able to do, if you have a show like this, and if you like books, and you like talking to authors, it’s kind of hard not to. So it was a real joy to talk to him and he is a delight. I know you’re going to enjoy that part of the show. 



[00:00:55] A very quick catch up around here because I am revising my little fingers off and I’m seriously just taking like a five-minute break to record this and get back to it. Everything has been going well, enjoying revising. It is not heavy lifting this time. It’s got just the right amount of thought that I need, like, I kinda got to go deep for a minute and then I can paddle around and words that I’m already really proud of and that belong. So, this is one of my favorite parts of writing. I think I say that a lot. My wife always laughs at me because I have many best friends, but they’re all my best friend and I have many favorite plates and favorite animals. I believe we can have lots of favorite things. And apparently I like a lot of the writing process. So this week I got to speak to the Jericho Writers’ Conference in England about revision, and that was so much fun. If any of you are here listening to the show for the first time, thank you for having me. My chair has got some creeks to work out I can hear today. So that was great. That was yesterday and the only other really big news in my life since we last talked is, we have air conditioning. It may have been being put in the last time I talked, but we have it now. I was really sad actually, after we got it, because it just didn’t seem to be cooling down our house. And I thought, well, that’s ridiculous. We spent all this money and we have a new, big, I don’t know what it’s called the compressor or something out on a concrete pad in the driveway. And it- it’s was sending cold air out of the vent, but it really wasn’t cooling down the house. It was a little tiny bit cooler, but the house would still continue to heat in the afternoon. And I finally emailed the, the guy who installed it a couple days ago and I said, is this normal, should this actually cool down our 1000 square foot house? And he said, what is your filter look like? And so I looked at the filter. I don’t think we’ve changed that filter in years. It was, and we have four animals. It was disgusting. I constantly confronted with the way that I am failing to adult. And that was one of ‘em, so I went over to the ACE hardware, bought myself a new filter and all afternoon, cool air has been coming in and then turning off because the house cools down. For the first couple of days that we had the AC, it ran all the time. And then I would just turn it off in frustration and open the windows because at night it gets cooler outside here and I would let the air in, but now it works. And I’m such a happy person that I can sit in my office. And it’s a temperate 75. It’s like 85 outside and it always heats up more in the house. So it would have been like 87 in my office right now. And it isn’t, and I’m so happy even though right now I’ve had a bunch of sugar in my face, just went very red and I’m very hot. That just happens. I cannot stop that. Revision means sugar. So I’m back on the sugar train, I will kick it again in a couple of weeks. No worries. 



[00:03:58] Thanks to new patrons at Elizabeth Dum- Dumpy. Thank you, Elizabeth. So much. I just mangled your name. Elizabeth Dunphy. It’s a very pretty name. Thank you so much. And Abby Stoddard. Thank you. Thank you, Abby. I have accidentally written two books where the main character was named Abby, one was Abby. One was Abigail. They were both called Abby. And I didn’t realize I had done it until this second book was literally published. I was heading into love song and then seven books later pack up the moon. Oops, love your name too. Thank you everyone who is supporting on Patreon. I know that these times are hard and if you need to dial back on your pledge or cancel your pledge, I will love you always forever. Don’t worry about that. You need to take care of you. But please know that everyone who does support me on Patreon, you really allow me to sit in this chair and to write these essays that I love writing and to do this show that I love doing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I’m going to get back into revision now. And I wish you all very happy writing, please come tell me how your own writing is going. Please sign up for my email newsletter if you’re not on it because I really do write back to every email I get and I love discussing writing with all of you. So enjoy the interview with Steven and we will talk soon. 



[00:00:55] This episode is brought to you by my book, Fast Draft Your Memoir, write your life story in 45 hours, which is by the way, totally doable and I tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year. And I’ll let you in on it secret, even if you have no interest in writing a memoir yet, the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing and of revision, and of story structure, and I’m just doing this thing. That’s so hard and yet all we want to do pick it up today. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:53] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. Steven Rowley. Hello, Steven!

Steven Rowley: [00:05:57] Hi, I’m so happy to be here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:00] I’m thrilled to talk to you about your writing process and about this particular book. Let me give a little introduction for those who might not know you. Steven Rowley is the author of The Editor and the national bestseller Lily and the Octopus, which has been translated into 19 languages. He has worked as a freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and screenwriter. Originally from Portland, Maine, Rowley is a graduate of Emerson college. He lives in Palm Springs, California. That’s a large jump from Portland, Maine. That’s 

Steven Rowley: [00:06:28] It is a little hop, skip, and a jump for sure. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:32] Yeah. You’re missing a bunch of snow. 

Steven Rowley: [00:06:35] Well, I, I, you know, I love Maine. It’s always, you know, going to be considered my home, but I had enough snow for, for a lifetime growing up there. And I don’t know, there was something about the desert that ultimately was what’s calling today.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:50] See, I was born in the desert, but I keep trying to talk my wife literally into moving to Portland, Maine. So, yeah. 

Steven Rowley: [00:06:58] It’s a great town, and, you know, I go back there now and I think, you know, why was I in such a hurry, run away from it because, but you know, it was a combination of being 18 and also I’ve grown up a lot in the city. The city has grown in tremendous ways. It’s got an incredible restaurant scene, culture theater although I miss, I miss live performance, I know all about art. Portland’s an incredibly beautiful and thriving city. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:25] It’s funny that I wanted to move there and I haven’t been, but that’s another thing why I keep saying maybe we should visit,

Steven Rowley: [00:07:30] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:07:31] No time soon. 

Steven Rowley: [00:07:32] I really highly recommend.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:33] Speaking of everything that’s going on, how are you doing in this moment? 

Steven Rowley: [00:07:37] We’re holding up, well, I am here in Palm Springs with my partner Byron Lane, who is also a novelist

Rachael Herron: [00:07:45] I know his name. And I’m wondering if I’ve read him. 

Steven Rowley: [00:07:48] Not yet his, his debut is called The Star is Bored and it comes out July 28th. So people can look for that as well. But he’s been undergoing chemotherapy. So it’s been, prognosis is very good. In fact, his last day of chemo was Friday, 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:02] Good

Steven Rowley: [00:07:03] but undergoing that, and caring for someone going through that during, with a global pandemic as a backdrop is a perhaps stressful, but we’re, we’re making it through. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:14] It’s, it’s so incredible. And that you’ve got to deal with taking care of him and making sure that none of the germs get in. Have you found that your house is like half the size, you thought it was? That’s what we have learned. We thought we had enough room

Steven Rowley: [00:08:28] Yeah. A lot of space. No, I will say though, our house has never been cleaner. That’s good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:36] See, that’s the opposite here we have a house cleaner, so our house has never been dirty.

Steven Rowley: [00:08:38] Yeah. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just you know, trying to keep, trying the extra steps that we take to try to keep the germs out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:48] Yeah. And both of you releasing a book, so

Steven Rowley: [00:08:50] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:08:51] Oh, still together. That is super, super exciting. But let’s talk about for you right now and how, my question is usually what’s your writing process? What does it usually look like? but also feel free to answer what it looks like right now in this moment too.

Steven Rowley: [00:09:10] I feel so grateful right now to have a job that allows me to escape into other, other worlds and other times. I, I really think that as a, as something to help mentally help me get through these times that that’s very fortunate. You know, I can sit down on a desk and almost travel to someplace where all of this isn’t, isn’t happening, even though I don’t leave my home. And I’ve never been more grateful for my job than I am right now. I’ve also been strangely productive and this is not, not a knock against anyone who is having trouble creating in this time. And in fact, this is incredibly difficult time to feel creative. But me, my biggest obstacle in writing has always been a FOMO. You know, that sort of fear of fear of missing out on what everyone else is doing. Particularly when you work at home and novel writing is such a solitary occupation, you know, my biggest fear was always, you know, wait, wait, wait, what’s everybody else doing? You know, like what are people having fun? And, you know, the answer right now is people aren’t doing a damn thing. So, you know, the world has kind of brown to a halt. And so it’s allowed me to sort of let go of that fear as it were, and, and really embraced getting work done. Now. Having said that, I sort of finished the projects that were on my desk and I’m, I’m finding, starting something new, it’s incredibly daunting against the backdrop of, of these times. You know, not just COVID, but everything that’s going on right now, as, as we think about what we want our country to look like and our world to look like and building a more, just fair, you know, a place to live for, for us all the lag time between, you know, sitting down to write a book and what it might be come out and hit shelves can be three, four, five years. So when you, when thinking about starting a project and there are important things to say right now, but what is it that you want to say about this rapidly changing world and how can you have a little bit of foresight into what the world will be when that book hits the shelf. I find that to be, you know, quite daunting. So we’ll see, 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:30] How are you-

Steven Rowley: [00:11:31] we’ll see if this productivity grinds to a halt. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:34] How are you answering that? Because I’m finding the same thing. My last book was a thriller about, corruption within the policing industry. So that was good all time. But the one I’m writing right now is about fetal abduction. It’s just a straight up thriller pregnant lady being stuck, and you know, like, and I’m, I’m really struggling with that, what does this book mean in the world? I know it will help somebody pass the time and that is important to me. But, but how do you, how are you addressing that? 

Steven Rowley: [00:12:04] Yeah, I think I, you know, this is an ongoing process, so I don’t have- forgive me over the, the answer is not fully articulated, but, you know, I tried to strip it back and think about what fiction means to me as a reader and, and I keep coming back to connection and there is something about the importance of sharing stories and kids human stories to sort of remind us that even though we may be isolated in this moment or, or sheltering at home, or, or not being able to be with our loved ones that there are, there are many stories that we can tell that, that even though the plot of those stories, don’t address this, this moment in time. If we can sort of write the emotional truth of what, what this feels like in his time and find a story, that you could sort of lay that over. I think that’s where the answer is going to lie 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:05] Gorgeous, and it’s such a good answer and it just made me feel so much better. And I want to say about your book, The Editor, which I just loved. I devoured it over the weekend because I am plunging. I’m sober. So I have nothing to distract me from. I have punched so much deeper into books, right. And these last few months, and I was always deep into them, but, you do this incredible job of really, exploring the emotional connection of a son and his mother in a meadow way. That the, the novelist, the, you know, the character is a novelist writing a book about his mother and, and the way you were able to do that, to draw the emotional connections out and, and not tire until the emotional resonance was found was really deep and really rich to me. And my, my favorite kind of book is a mother, mother-child stories. So, thank you for that. 

Steven Rowley: [00:14:00] Yeah there are many, many more mother-daughter stories that this is, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:11] There are

Steven Rowley: [00:14:00] This is a true mother-son love story and you know, at its heart, it has, it has a fun hook for those 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:13] Oh, please tell ahead. Now. I don’t read blurbs. I don’t read anything. I just have somebody say, you know, let’s get them on your show. I’ll read the book. So I did not see it coming. 

Steven Rowley: [00:14:27] Oh, fantastic. As an artist, I really wish that’s how everyone could experience now. I would not win that fight with my publisher and the marketing department, you know, in a million years, I’m not gonna win that fight, but it’s fun to talk to someone who is able to sort of go in blind. But the book takes place in early 1990s, New York. And our narrator is a young, writer sort of armed with a candidly autobiographical, manuscript. He’d written about his relationship with his mother and the editor that acquires the book for publication and the eponymous editor is none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was at the time, perhaps the most famous book editor, for those who, who may not remember, or weren’t really aware of this, she had this incredible 15-year career as an editor first at Viking Press and then a double day which has spent the bulk of her career. She- 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:26] I did not know any of this. In fact, it was one of the wonderful moments-

Steven Rowley: [00:15:29] Yeah. Yeah. It’s truly fascinating

Rachael Herron: [00:15:30] I put the book down. I’m like, this cannot be true. Is this science fiction? 

Steven Rowley: [00:15:29] You actually google 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:30] And I was Googling and the Wiki came up in 15 years as an editor. She, in fact, I believe it was in the Wiki, not your book, but, there were still manuscripts in her apartment when she died, she was still working. It’s incredible 

Steven Rowley: [00:15:49] Yeah. She worked right up until, until her passing in 1994. Yeah, she had sublimated so much of her own life to these two marriages, you know, to be very powerful men and it wasn’t until, her second husband Onassis, Aristotle Onassis died that she sort of put her head down, and went to work and I think people were very skeptical of her at first or assume she was some sort of you know, vanity hire or, or assume that she was hired for her role at decks that perhaps the publisher wanted to access to many people who could, who could write books, and thought she would be a way to reel them in, but she proved everybody wrong. She really did the nuts and bolts of editing. She did the hard work, you know, line editing, and what’s involved in every step of the process along the way. She was very interested in the way for books, books the quote right down to the, the weight of the paper and, you know, like the cover design and everything. And then you know, getting to learn more about that and, and really research that was one of the great joys in writing this. And unfortunately, I had a very, supportive editor myself and the great Sally Kim at Putnam and a, and a publisher who helped put me in touch with many of her former coworkers.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:10] Oh, wow. 

Steven Rowley: [00:17:11] And now, 25 years later, you know where people who are just starting out, but are now in very senior positions in publishing who were generous with their observations. And there’s great stories about, you know, her elbow deep in a photocopier clearing a paper jam, you know, to running down the hallway and stocking feet to make a, you know, on a deadline or something. And it’s just, it’s just the, just the fantasy of what it would have been like to work with her is incredibly fun to think about. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:34] I have that image that really didn’t leave me where, I can’t remember who said it in the book, but basically, you know, we’re all dreaming of getting out of the office and onto the yacht. And she was actually dreaming about getting off the yacht and into the office and she remained there until she died basically and, but, but you know, she’s, she’s your hook and she’s an incredible person in the book, but I just really loved our narrator too. I, I just loved being with him and his relationship and the, Oh, it was just, it was so real and so good. When you are writing, just to get into the next question that I have here. What is your- cause when I’m reading a book that is completely done and polished and perfect, when I’m working on a revision of my book, as I am, you know, it’s always like, Oh God, I could never be a writer again. I’m never going to write a book again because it’s so perfect. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Steven Rowley: [00:18:30] It’s actually getting my butt in the chair. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:34] Easier with coronavirus. 

Steven Rowley: [00:18:36] Yeah, yeah. Usually, that’s the problem now and I’ve got no place else to go. So yeah, I know I’m banking work now because I know I’m going to want to be out in the world when we can all, we can do that again, but that’s, you know, writers are famous procrastinators. I’m also a very social person. I haven’t figured it out yet. I love to chat. So, it’s, it’s kind of ironic that I picked this sort of very quiet and solitary job. So I don’t think it’s, it’s showing up to do the work. Once I’m, once I’m going, you know, we all have you know, have to come up with little tricks sometimes because just to jumpstart, you know, like once it’s flowing, it’s flowing, but you know, it’s a daunting feeling to try to figure out how to, how to jumpstart that each day.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:28] What are some of your jumpstart tricks that you pull out?

Steven Rowley: [00:19:30] You know, it’s different than, you know, often it’s just as simple as getting a running start. So that, and I mean that in several different ways, it could be going back and reading the previous day’s work just to, just to sort of ramp up to where you left off. It can be writing some emails, doing some other kinds of writing correspondence or, you know, even making lists of things that I have to get done. So I don’t, so I can feel like I can download that and not stressed about that while I’m working, then I won’t forget. I made a list. So that can be, that can be very helpful. I think the biggest lesson I learned is not to punish yourself. For instance, I know when I sit down at the computer, it’s very hard for me to just dive right in. So I might check my email. I might look at Twitter. I might read the headlines, although I don’t advise that for different reasons, but, but so understanding, but that’s part of the process and not, not punishing myself for way for wasting the first 30 or 40 minutes that I sit down and not having accomplished anything, because what used to happen is I would be so mad at myself that then I would sit there and stew for another 30 or 40, and then I’ve doubled the time that I lost. But if you understand that that’s part of the process and you allow for that and build in time for that. Then you don’t then, then there’s no reason to feel bad about it 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:01] It’s how you get there. That’s what I love about doing this yeah. Is talking about people’s different processes and how they sneak up on writing. I don’t think anybody just takes off their clothes every morning and pushes himself up against all the words in the universe. We don’t want to do that. We want, we need a little bit more gentle. What is your biggest joy when it comes to the writing process? 

Steven Rowley: [00:21:23] Oh, goodness. I think, you know, there’s the very famous, now I forget who said it but, the, the sort of having written, the feeling of having written, having written there’s no better feeling in the world, but like a really well-crafted sentence still, you know, it turns me on 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:42] Yeah, totally.

Steven Rowley: [00:21:435] When I do something that I’m proud of, but I hear things, lyrically or rhythmically sometimes. And the struggle is to get words on the page and the same sort of rhythm and the same beats that I hear them in my head. So that’s, sometimes when that happens, you know, sometimes it takes writing that sentence four or five times, but when I feel like, Oh, that clicks into something, that’s almost a poetry at least to me then, then that’s, that’s where real joy was.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:21] That’s lovely. Do you and Byron share work while it’s in progress? 

Steven Rowley: [00:22:25] Sometimes I would say, you know, it’s not like we don’t do a daily living with another writer. A lot of people think that would be hell. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] I think it would be hell, yes. 

Steven Rowley: [00:22:35] Yeah, there, there are some advantages to it as well. For instance, you know, you’re in it, it’s hard to shut off sometimes, you know, just because it’s time to eat dinner or come together as a couple at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean that you can just lose everything that your brain is working on. And sometimes I need to sit there and think, still because I’m downloading what I’ve done for the day, or I’m trying to, trying to think ahead to the next day’s work. Not lose something important and to have a partner that understand, you know, that doesn’t, doesn’t get angry or take it personally when you’re not a hundred percent there you know, in front of them at the dinner table, like that, that, that helps. We definitely read each other’s work, not, not on a, you know, like chapter by chapter basis, but, you know, certainly, certainly he’s my first reader for, for a draft of something and vice versa but, but it’s nice to have someone to talk through, you know, we can bounce, like we do bounce ideas off each other along the way, or I’m really stuck on this and you think of a way you know, that’s helpful.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:43] So good. That’s so good. I actually, my wife is very good at that. She is an artist, not a writer, but she reads so much that she’s very good to bounce against, but yeah, that sounds so cool. You may have already done this, was sharing the, the, how you sneak up, get the running start, but can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Steven Rowley: [00:24:02] That’s a good, that’s a good question. Oh yeah. I, I would say, you know, I moved the systems are crafted so much, but one thing that I’ve learned that I would love to share, if I can just,

Rachael Herron: [00:24:17] Yes, please.

Steven Rowley: [00:24:18] If I can just do a parallel question, for years, you know, I published my, I was in my forties when I published my first novel and I’m still in my forties, but you know, it took years for me to, to get published and there were several manuscripts that I’d written along the way years, and, you know, and they sit on the shelf and, and I had a, you know, it’s only very recently in the last couple of years, that I have been able to make writing my full time profession. I always had to take off. And so when people ask me what I did, I always, don’t, you know, I’m a, I’m a writer, but, you know, and then I would, I would say what my day job was, and I was almost embarrassed. Thinking that, because the bulk of my financial income didn’t come from writing that I wasn’t a writer and I wish I could go back and tell a younger me that now, if you, if you write, if you are pursuing this then, and you’re passionate about it, it doesn’t matter if that’s where your income comes from or not. You are a writer. And I w- I want people to be able to say that with confidence and with pride. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:27] Yes. I wish that more people would do that. I remember the very first time I ever said it at a party. I said, I’m a writer, even though, it was not my job. And the very next question was, are you published? And I was like, Oh God dammit. And you know your answer for that, then everyone who’s listening, who doesn’t know how to answer that. You just say very sweetly. Not yet. 

Steven Rowley: [00:25:47] Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, I wish we could train people. You know, there’s certain questions that you know are coming. I wish we could train a society to, to be a little more, gentle with their, you know, if your dog passed away, are you getting another dog? 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:01] Oh my god

Steven Rowley: [00:25:03] There are certain questions, it’s like, it shouldn’t be the first question. You know, like it’d be a little bit, perhaps a little more sensitive you know, more, more who’s like, Oh, what, what types of things are you working out?

Rachael Herron: [00:26:13] Absolutely right, yeah.

Steven Rowley: [00:25:14] That’s a, that’s perhaps a better, a better follow-up. But here everybody thinking, you know, 90, 95% of writers also, supplement their income through other, you know, other forms of writing through editing, teaching, working at Starbucks and I was like, you know, you know, incredible other jobs as well. So they’re, they’re certainly, shouldn’t be any hesitation just because you have some other job as well. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:44] So that’s a challenge to listeners. The next time you were asked what you do if you ever go to a party again, your answer should be I’m a writer. Okay. This is, this is a good one for you. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Steven Rowley: [00:27:04] Well certainly the answer for me there is having a dog you know, I think it’s I mentioned, you know, it’s a very solitary career. It’s also a very sedentary career and I have loved, you know, not only is it the book, that broke through for me, my, my first novel, Lily and the Octopus was, was in fact about a relationship I had with the dog but, we’re inspired by that relationship, but, you know, just the simple act of having another soul near you, another bar, you know, you, just sleeping, like not just seeing, you know, that chest rise and fall sometimes. It’s, it’s deeply comforting and it’s allowed me to continue working sometimes even when I felt very lonely. It’s also someone you can, you can have a conversation with. They may not talk back, but you can talk things through with them and they get you out of the chair every few hours to move around and honest to God, you know, I think this is obvious to most people who’ve written getting the blood flowing, you know, just moving your physical body every short while is really gonna help, you know, the blood flow to the brain and the quality of your work. And I never would have connected owning a dog to, to as to being integral to writing but for me it has been.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:26] I, I don’t think I’ve ever put such clear words on it. Yes. If I didn’t take my dog one, we have two dogs. I take one out in the morning and the other one is so old that basically the rest of every time I get up, I’m just putting another blanket on her, you know, even in the summer, that’s my full time job.

Steven Rowley: [00:28:41] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:28:42] Oh, okay. So what is the best book you’ve read recently? And why did you love it? 

Steven Rowley: [00:28:46] Oh, goodness. Well, just to keep the peace at home, my, my favorite is The Stars Are Bored by Byron Lane coming July 28th, but that’s a, that’s a cop out, 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:56] That’s a good title.

Steven Rowley: [00:28:57] You know, you know, I’m here to, to I’m talking about The Editor, which was released on paperback June 30th, but also in paperback on June 30th, the same day was Colson Whitehead’s, The Nickel Boys 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:10] I haven’t read that one.

Steven Rowley: [00:29:11] If you happen to miss that, because of the field service, but if you happen to miss that in hardcover, now’s a good time to check that out. But I also just read a book cause I love a family drama. I mean, that’s, that’s my bread and butter it’s what I love. And my new novel coming out next year is this sort of sibling, steroid, but there’s a book I just read called The Second Home by Christina Clancy, which is the story of three strange adult siblings who have to come together and decide the fate of their childhood vacation home and it’s really a fantastic summer read. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:47] Thank you. I, that’s my jam too. I will immediately put that on my list along with Lily and the Octopus. Cause now I know that I love reading you and it’s about a dog in some way. I mean. 

Steven Rowley: [00:29:56] It’s about a dog. Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:59] So you’ve told us about, The Editor, where can we find you? Where can we find it? Also, just from me to you. I have a book going to paper in August and I’ve never gone from hard covered to paper back. I’ve always been in paperback first how have you found the release of that during all of this? Just doing a lot of this kind of thing? 

Steven Rowley: [00:30:17] So I, the paperback has a brand new cover. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:21] It’s gorgeous

Steven Rowley: [00:30:22] A different color hardcover, which is really beautiful and one thing that I found so interesting as I’m thinking about covers differently right now, and I don’t know if your book has the same cover as the hardcover,

Rachael Herron: [00:30:31] Different. They changed it.

Steven Rowley: [00:30:33] or not yet. Yeah. But one thing to keep in mind now, when, when bookstores aren’t necessarily open for us for browsing, many are open for curbside pickup, or if you know what you want, you get it. But some stores eliminate or schedule browsing, but we’re not free to just get lost in a bookstore and the way we were right then or used to be. And so we have to think about covers a little bit differently because we’re doing a lot of our book buying online and so like, what is that? And, and a lot of book marketing has shifted to, to Instagram bookstagramers, or so, you know, such an integral part of the publishing community now, you know, Instagram, Facebook, all this stuff. So what does the cover look like, you know, in a thumbnail size online? Do these colors really pop? It’s very interesting, it’s very interesting to think about, but it’s also very exciting, cause I think, you know, it’s hard to break through the noise. Sometimes there are a lot of titles out there and just the idea that there’s a new edition coming out and that might attract new readers that that maybe missed it the first time around it’s, you know, it feels very excited. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:31:37] I, I feel like my cover, my new cover is good, but I feel like your new cover is great, like, it just pops off the page. And when I did find out that it was Jackie O I was like, Oh, that’s. Okay. Now I can, now I can see what’s going on here. Cause it did give me that, but it was very subtle. It was not necessarily Jackie O on the cover. Fabulous. Okay so where can I find-

Steven Rowley: [00:32:00] To hit you over the head with it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:01] Where can we find you?

Steven Rowley: [00:32:02] So I’ve got at the back of the paperback running when it wants to pick up the paper back, there are two sample chapters. For my new novel, which will be out next spring, God willing, we’re all still here. That’s part of the, the paperback is the opportunity to have some supplemental material. This is a good booklet questions and then a sneak peek at what comes in. So people can find me I’m on all social media @ Mr. Steven, S T E V E N, Rowley, R O W L E Y. So find me Instagram (mrstevenrowley), Twitter (mrstevenrowley), Facebook (mrstevenrowley) there and, I have a website, www.stevenrowley.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:37] You were very clever to get all of the same handles everywhere. Minor. Just a little bit.

Steven Rowley: [00:32:43] Well, I, yeah, you say that, but, and I thought, Oh, Mr. Steven, cause Steven Rowley was taken by Mr. Steven. And now I have to tell the world that I’m, it doesn’t say Mrs. Tevin.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] I would not have seen that coming, but you’re right. That is what it looks like.

Steven Rowley: [00:33:00] Bad that’s like, that’s my plans. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:02] I apologize for mispronouncing your name earlier too, it’s-

Steven Rowley: [00:33:05] Oh, no. I think I’m the oldest person in the world. Me and my father are the last two people. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:11] Thank you so much for being on the show, Steven, this has been an absolute delight to talk to you and  

Steven Rowley: [00:33:17] It’s a thrill to be able to talk to someone else outside our home, so thank you for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:20] That is the way. And you’re the only person I’m doing that with today, so that’s great. All right. Thanks Steven. Bye.

Steven Rowley: [00:33:27] Take care.

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. 189: Steven Rowley on When You Get To Call Yourself A Writer appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 188: Elizabeth Kay on Taking Off Her Editor’s Hat to Write a Bestseller

Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a different name. She lives in London and has a first-class degree in English literature.

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 188 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled you’re here with me today, as we are talking to Elizabeth Kay, who wrote a phenomenal novel called Seven Lies. And she, which I learned during our interview, is actually an editor and kind of came into writing from that standpoint, so it’s a fascinating interview. I think you’re really gonna enjoy it. Hope you, hope that you do, I’m sure that you will. And just a quick catch up on what’s going on around here, I am just revising again. I live in revision land. It’s wonderful. And it’s hard. And I think that I’m at the point with this book where I just want maybe to be writing a different book. We all get to that point where we’re like, Oh God, I don’t want to look at this scene even one more time and I need to, this is the fourth revision that I’m doing for my editor. And when I get to a scene, I’m like welcome friend, good grief! Back again. I will say something. I got pro writing aid, I had used Grammarly for a long time to kind of check to see, I am really, really bad at doubling words or leaving words out. I type very fast and my brain goes too fast and I usually like, one word every three sentences is left out and it’s often an important word. So Grammarly was helping me with that. However, I tried pro writing aid, which was cheaper to buy outright and have it forever than it was to have Grammarly. And I just tested it out this week with a Patreon essay. And it was very, very helpful. 



[00:02:03] While I was looking at my revisions of my book yesterday, I tried putting in a chapter to use pro writing aid and it was overwhelming. It actually got me way too far into the minutiae of editing. And I’m not quite there yet. I’m still dealing with some character issues and some plot issues. So I need to back out. But I know that at the very last, the very last point, when I’m about to send it to my editor, I will run it through pro writing aid, which I like a lot more than Grammarly, especially for it pointing out unwieldy sentences and words or phrases that you have repeated too many times. I’ve got a pretty good ear for repeats now, it used to be terrible when I started this game, I would use the word bus, you know, twice in a paragraph or whatever. And I wouldn’t hear that you don’t want to use the same word two or three times close together on a page. It’s hard to see, that’s what editors see for you. So don’t worry about that if you can’t see it, but it is nice to also have a program that will point it out to you. 



[00:03:06] So, that was fun! In other big news, it’s my birthday weekend, it’s the 4th of July weekend as I record this. And I did something really fun today for my birthday. I went out into open water and swam in the Bay. I got a wetsuit, I got it for my birthday, for myself, online and I put it on and a friend met me out there and kind of taught me how to sight as we swim, because it’s a different experience. You have to raise your head to sight where you’re going and to breathe. Combining the two moves when I am just used to, you know, breathing on the side and looking down at a lane marker, it’s very, very different. I got a little bit dizzy because it was choppy out on the Bay today and I loved every single second of it. I absolutely loved it. I am now an open water swimmer and so for my birthday, I am going out at 9:30 AM with a group and they swim every week in Berkeley. They swim three times a week. They just go out into the Bay and swim and it’s the Bay, it’s just there. It’s, it’s a little dirty and it’s a little, the ground is slimy, and it’s okay. It was so fun. I am such a water baby. I just want to have my body in water all the time. I always wanted to surf. Because I wanted just to sit on the surf board, I never wanted to actually surf or get in line or deal with other people who are waiting in line to catch the, the surfing wave. I also didn’t want a huge board that could hit me the head, none of that. And I realized recently that no, I just wanted to go out in the ocean and hang out and you can do that in a wetsuit. It’s a buoyant. You just kind of get tired of, of swimming, just kind of kick back and look up at the sky or roll around. It was so much fun. So I am a new convert and I’m kind of obsessed and I can’t wait to go for my second time. So that is what’s exciting around here, nothing to do with writing, but outside hobbies are fantastic for our writing. Right? I hope that you are getting some work done. Please come to wherever I am online and tell me about it. I really love to hear from you all. And now we’re just gonna jump right into the interview with Elizabeth Kay. Please enjoy and happy writing to you. 



[00:05:26] 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: [00:05:44] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. Elizabeth Kay. Hello, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Kay: [00:05:49] Hello! Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:05:52] Oh, I’m thrilled. I loved your book, we’re going to talk about that. Just a little introduction, Elizabeth Kay works in the publishing industry under a different name. She lives in London and has a first class degree in English literature, and Elizabeth, your book Seven Lies as we record, it comes out tomorrow. Is that right?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:06:08] It does. Yes. It’s been out in the UK for a couple of months now, but out in the US tomorrow. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:13] Okay. That is so exciting. We were just talking off air a little bit. This is your debut novel and you are the, the really, the “it” girl right now. Does it feel like that?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:06:29] No, actually, maybe it’s partly locked down as well. I feel like I’m in a little bubble in the middle of nowhere, in a way. But the whole thing has been really exciting. I mean, I’m so thrilled to see it published here and I’m with you guys. So, it’s a whirlwind. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] It’s one of those that I, I get a lot offers from publicists on books and I don’t always have the time to read the books, but your book looks so compelling that I picked it up and I just could not put it down. It was one of those, you have a long list of people who blurbed it so beautifully and it’s worth every blurb. I just could not stop turning the pages, so, 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:09] Oh, thank you so much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:10] Have you always been drawn to the thriller genre? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:15] No. Well, no, actually the first thriller I really read was Gone Girl, 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:19] Okay.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:20] So not that long ago 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:20] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:21] when that came out, and but I mean, what a place to start

Rachael Herron: [00:07:24] Yes

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:25] And since then I’ve been, it’s definitely what I read more than anything else, you know? And there’s been, I mean, there’ve been so many good novels in that space in the last few years. You’ll never short of it. That’s a great book if that’s your area. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:37] Never short and if you know, once you get a couple of friends who do the texting back and forth, Oh, I got another one. You got to read this one. And your book was one of those that I’ve been telling all of my tight thriller reader friends to read. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:07:49] Oh good.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:50] But let’s talk about your writing process, cause that’s what we do on this show. So what is, what is your writing process look like? How did you get this done? I’m assuming, do you have another job in the industry on the side? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:08:02] Yeah, so I work Monday to Friday, as an editor for payment random house in the UK. So this is very much a weekend project. This was a Saturday, Sundays, for about nine months, six to nine months as my first draft. And it was basically, I found that if I got dressed for the day, then I have to start the day. So as long as I stayed in my pajamas, it was easy to just pretend I was in kind of a weird limbo between night and day, where I would just sit down and write for a good few hours. So that was my process for getting the bulk of this novel, this novel done. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:36] That is so, so clever. I love that little hack and I, I didn’t realize that you were an editor there. What kind of literature do you edit at Penguin? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:08:46] I work quite a lot. I do keep you through this, but not very many, but some kind of book, club-fiction and lots of nonfiction as well. So a real mix. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:54] How did it feel coming to this book with your editor’s hat- were you able to take the editor’s hat off for the first draft?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:09:02] No, I’m terrible. I’m terrible at taking my editor hat off and I much prefer, once I’ve done the first draft, I’m much happier kind of fiddling and playing around and free working. I find the first bit of real slog. I’m trying to watch that word count, go up really slowly. And I had, I’d worked on a few novels before this, tried to write things and nothing had ever felt that exciting. So in a way, with this book, I wrote the first chapter and it’s in the voice of Jane whose main character, and once I had her, this felt so much easier. I actually, I would almost say I enjoyed the first draft with this one 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:38] Oh my goodness.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:10:39] Which I really liked. I like being in her head. So that made it a lot easier but, says me, the editor in me was always having to make her be quiet.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:51] The, without giving any spoilers, of course, the end actually surprised me and I have a harder and harder time finding that in books as we, as we push envelopes, and as we write everything we possibly can, and I read all the thriller, everything and your ending surprised me both what it was and how it was done. Did you, this is just a curiosity on Rachael’s part question. Did you know the ending when you were writing toward it or did it come to you later? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:10:20] I knew from the very near the beginning where the ending was set, and sort of the bones of what was going to happen. The kind of the detail took a lot longer. I think that’s probably the bit that had the most drafts. I wrote, I would say probably at least 10, maybe 15 different versions of the ending with black, not huge changes, but different characters in different places, slightly different ways to twist it. And it was certainly the bit that I found most challenging. So I’m glad it was a surprise because I agree with you. That’s, you know, it’s hard to do something that does shock people, I think. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:56] Yeah. I think, I think it is. And you did something really creative with tents and at the very end where it was just, I had to like go back and check to see how you had done it. So good job ‘yo!

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:05] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] What, what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:10] Certainly it, it’s the editor in me mostly, but, I had a baby at the beginning of the year. So now it’s time. I used to be able to, in a way I think, well, I’m just having to be stricter. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:21] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:22] If I have two hours, I write and I try and write fast. I don’t have time for the editor anymore, she’s gone. Get the words down. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:29] So, and is this your first baby? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:22] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:29] So how interesting to have this happen after you’d written all of this what, you know, maternal stuff? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:39] Yeah. So it’s kind of, I don’t, I haven’t read my book since I’ve had my son. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:43] Yeah

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:44] I wonder if it would make me feel differently. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:46] I don’t know. It’s like-

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:49] I might do it and see what I feel.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:51] What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:11:53] Actually, for me, it’s been people saying, I thought it was kind of the editing bits and in a way it is, but it’s also people saying, Oh, you know, I’ve, I’ve told my mum she has to read it or I’ve suggested it to my book club. It’s really exciting to have people want to share it and want to talk. I think that’s the thing I love about reading when I finish a book and I want to say, you’ve got to read this cause I have to speak to someone 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:15] Yes

Elizabeth Kay: [00:12:16] and for people to be doing that about my book, it’s just a real joy because that’s, those are the books that really like, I really love when I want to do that. I know it’s been a great read. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:25] That’s a- that’s a really beautiful way to show love I think too, between, you know, family members or friends who are doing that. I, my, my mom, it was always my best person that all got all of my books. And she sent me all the books that she loved the most and that, and that hole has never been quite filled. Like I have other people, well, this is my thriller person. This is my club person. But, but yeah, no, that’s beautiful. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:12:51] Well, in terms of silencing your inner editor, one of the things I did a lot last time, and I can see myself having to do again, working on a book 2, is turning the font to the color white as you’re typing. So you can’t see what you’re writing you just- as long as you can type fairly, fairly well, not too many typos. It’s a good way to kind of just write two or three pages. So everything I’m talking to myself, there’s no way I’m thinking it, stop going back and saying, no one would ever say that, or that would never happen. Well, that sounds really messy. Just keep going. And then once you’ve done a chunk, you can turn it back to a black font or whatever color you work with first and read through it 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:26] That’s genius.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:27] and see if it works.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:29] I’ve heard so many other tips and tricks about, you know, make it too small, so your eye can’t see it or, or, you know, close your eyes, but the white just works and you can probably still see where the cursor is, right?

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:40] Yes. And you can see the pages going,

Rachael Herron: [00:13:29] Right

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:40]  which is very satisfying.  

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Satisfying and also I, I always worried that, like, if I couldn’t see it or close my eyes, I would worry that I’d clicked away and I’m not actually writing, you know, in the wrong window or something 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:54] Yeah, you can see the cursor, you can see that there are red lines underneath every time you’ve made a typo, but you can’t read the words. And you can’t see 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:05] That’s genius. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:13:54] The length of your paragraph, so any of your grammars, you have to ignore all of those bits and just think about the story for a few pages. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] I am loving that. Thank you. That just blew my mind and I can hear it blowing the minds of the listeners. So, thank you. That’s brilliant.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:20] You have to try

Rachael Herron: [00:14:21] Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. Okay. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:29] I think probably, probably my mood. I find, there are some chap- sometimes I’ll be writing a chapter and I think I just can’t write this now, or I’ll be in a really bad mood or pretty cross about something. And I think I’m going to go write that, that chapter I know needs to come soon. It’s a really angry one. I’ll go do that now. I’m not very good at kind of silencing myself to put on a different pair of glasses or a different coat, and far better to follow where I’m at. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] So you use it, you use the mood to do what

Elizabeth Kay: [00:14:59] I tried to

Rachael Herron: [00:15:00] you need to do. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:01] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:15:02] That’s so clever, when I’m in a-

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:03] I don’t think you can write a love scene if you’re in a really cross mood,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:06] No

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:06] maybe other people can try, but I can’t. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I’ve tried. I’ve tried. I cannot. It does not work. That’s so much smarter usually when I’m in a grumpy mood, I just stop things and avoid the page completely. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:17] Well, that works as well. Sometimes I have to walk away.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:20] It feels pretty good. I got to tell you, I just turned in a revision to my editor four days ago, so I’m still like, high on the fumes of being done, so

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:31] And having a creative time where you’re like, it’s not my job anymore. It’s someone else’s job for a little bit.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:35] Unfortunately, my editor is, I don’t know about you, but she’s one of those people, she’ll get it back to me in a week. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:39] Oh so you got to make the most of it

Rachael Herron: [00:15:44] She’s horrible. So just know that as an editor, we love it when you say, Oh, I hope to get to it in the next six weeks. No, you can take eight. You can take twelve. I don’t care. Yeah. Okay. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? And why did you love it? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:15:58] I have just finished reading, Shari Lapena’s a new novel, Shari Lapena, Shari Lapina, which is called The End of Her. It’s out in the UK next month. I think it’s probably similar in the US. Which is another, if you’ve read The Couple Next Door or any of her other books, this is another brilliant suburb and thriller, great characters, love to hate most of them, lots of good twist, really fast paced. So it’s very much fun to look out for. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:25] Perfect. I really- she’s Canadian, right? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:27] Yeah, she is.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:28] Yeah. I’ve never heard the term suburban thriller. I’ve heard domestic thriller, but I really liked the term suburban thriller because that’s really what hers. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:36] And they’re always like mini – aren’t they?

Rachael Herron: [00:16:38] Yeah, absolutely. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:39] So neighbors, all of that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:41] I love that. Thank you. And will you tell us a little bit like your elevator pitch of Seven Lies and tell us a little bit about it.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:16:50] Okay. So it is, it’s the story of two friends, Jane and Marnie, who’ve known each other since they were 11. It’s the seven lies that Jane tells to Marnie, which gets more and more sinister as the novel moves on and which results in a death near the middle of the novel. And far darker things further on. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:09] I loved, I talked to my students a lot about that context shifting midpoint. And when you use that midpoint of, we will not name who died, but somebody died, and I was like, yes, that’s a perfect place. Death is always a good thing to put in the midpoint.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:21] I think that you should start in the middle. That’s what I always say, it works out well, when what happens in the middle first? 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:26] Yes. When I remember to do that, it works well. Usually I do not.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:30] I’m on my own. I’m always forgetting all the good advice that people telling me.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:35] So are you in the process right now of writing book two? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:38] I am writing a couple of book 2, it’s to see which one works best. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:42] Oh, good for you.

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:44] See which one fit. And I’m kind of flashing out a few first chapter to see whether one of them feels strong enough. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:51] I love that. Yay! All right, and where can people find you? 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:17:55] They can find me if they’d like to, I’d love to hear from anyone who reads the book, if people will enjoy it or have a question I’m at AnyOtherLizzy on Twitter and Instagram AnyOtherLizzy. So come find me there. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:06] Perfect. Thank you, thank you so very much for this interview and thanks for a book that puts spring in my step again, when I, when it comes to the thriller genre. So thank you. 

Elizabeth Kay: [00:18:18] Thank you for having me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:19] Welcome. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] 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. 188: Elizabeth Kay on Taking Off Her Editor’s Hat to Write a Bestseller appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 187: Eddie King on Why There’s No Right Way of Writing

Eddie King is an author, screenwriter, and television presenter. Born and raised in Hampstead, London, he spent many years working in the film industry as a producer and script consultant on large-budget Hollywood productions. He is a prominent ambassador of American country music across Europe and co-hosts a weekly primetime television series where he interviews some of Nashville’s biggest stars. Eddie has written five novels, all in the contemporary romance genre. His first book, ‘Spoilt For Choice’ earned him a Young Writers’ Award nomination and ‘Southern Girl: Daisy Dukes and Cowboy Boots’ has been adapted for screen. He currently splits his time between London, Los Angeles, and Nashville.

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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 #187 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re here with me today. 



[00:00:25] Today, I am talking to the awesome Eddie King, who is doing something with his book. That I have never heard of being done. You want to stick around for how he is using social media and this new release of his, it’s completely fascinating. And he is a super sweetie, super genuine and willing to share. And he talks about there being no right way of writing. And I love that. I am constantly telling people how to write and always trying to remember to add onto the end of that. I’m right. Unless I’m wrong. In which case, you’re right. Do your own thing that is so true about writing, so I know you’re going to enjoy this really interesting and very different interview. 



[00:01:15] And let’s see what’s going on around here. Well, I got my revision letter from my editor and it was so good. She, she spent a whole single spaced page. So we’re talking 500 words or so praising me. And you know, when you get a revision letter from your editor, usually often they say, you know, a few nice things, and then they jump into the meat of the revision letter, which is what you need to fix, which is the job, right? That’s the revision letters job, is to tell you what is broken and what needs fixing and so when you hear the compliments as a writer, all of our brains say something like, well, you know, she has to say that, you know, that’s her job. She’s supposed to build me up before she tears it apart. But these compliments were so specific that in my email, back to her, I wrote something like I actually believe you because this is the difference between somebody saying you look pretty. And somebody saying, oh my gosh, that color is divine. It brings out your eyes. And what skincare regimen are you using? Oh, I’d love to get the name of whatever product you’re using on your skin because you are glowing. That’s the difference? and that’s, that’s that latter one is the thing where I got the revision letter. So that’s great. So I am now going into my fourth, big revision. So I’m going to take moment to kind of break down right now what happens when you get a revision letter from an editor. 



[00:02:44] So I’m working with Hush Little Baby coming out next year. It, I did a terrible shitty first draft, which is the way I write, which is the way I believe most people should write, but there are no, there’s no right and wrong. I do accept that. And I did a massive, massive makes sense draft, which was then followed up by a couple of passes that clean things up and did a little bit of smaller things. So I would consider those my first and second draft. And then I sent it to my editor. Second draft doesn’t really cover what happened after the second draft, before I sent it to my editor where I do the smaller passes of looking for specific things. But you, kind of get the gist, the big, huge, heavy lifting of the second draft was done before I sent it to my editor, my editor at that point I’ve mentioned on the show, just called me it wasn’t-  I, the book needed too much work even to get into a revision letter, honestly. I had to move so much stuff around in the book that it was just a conversation and she said less slow in the beginning, less stabbing at the end, get some more stabbing up front and some emotions in the back. So I rewrote the book in another very big, third draft, heavy lifting kind of thing. And that’s what she got a couple of weeks ago. And now I have the actual revision letter and this is what you get from your editor. You will have an editor, whether you get an agent to sell your work, and are traditionally published, or then your editor kind of works for you and they give you money. And then they edit you, which is a nice part of traditional publishing. If you choose to sell, publish, you have to hire your editor and you’ll get just as good an experience if you know what to look for and it’s marvelous to hire your own editor. I always recommend Reedsy.com, everybody there is vetted most have worked in the traditional publishing industry. I’ve never heard a bad thing about an editor that my students and coaching clients have used. So I recommend that if you’re going to the self-publishing route, no matter what you’re going to get what’s called a revision letter and a revision letter, for some reason, it was always single-spaced who this one was 6 pages long. I have heard of 20 and 30-page revision letters. I think my shortest was two pages and my longest was maybe 10. So this is about average 6 pages and, with the revision letter talks about is the broad stroke stuff this character needs to be expanded, this red herring doesn’t work. And here’s why this entire plot line can and should be lifted out. 



[00:05:29] There were recommendations that you get to choose whether or not you take, I take all of them, because every editor I’ve ever worked with has been way more right about these things than I am. I can’t see the forest for the trees. They are right. So, what I do, this is my process. It is exactly the same process that I use in any other revision pass revision is something, I talk about it a lot that can be learned. It is a process. Once you learn it, you have it forever to use in every revision process. I’m doing it on that book of essays I talked about last week. You can listen in episode number 108 of like a, a breakdown of how I revise, but just real quickly for this one, for an editing letter, for a revision letter, from an editor, I do the same thing I always do. I print out a new and correct an up-to-date sentence outline, which just has a snippet of each scene. Not even a snippet, it has a few words that say what happens in each scene. So I can basically read my whole book in 30 seconds or so, 45 seconds of casting my eye over those. I leave a lot of space in between the scenes so I can scribble in there because this sentence outline will become my map for revision. So I print that out, and then I sit down with the revision letter and I get out my little two and a half by one inch post it’s, and for every idea, my editor gives me. I make a post it, and I stick it in my whatever journal I’m using at the time. Or you can put it on an eight and a half piece of paper by 11, or you could put it on the back of your sentence outline wherever you want. Just stick them somewhere. Every single idea that she gives you, write it down. 



[00:07:15] Then, what I do that probably took me an hour and a half this morning, just doing those post- it’s. Then, you open the document that she sends you, she’ll send you your revised document in word with comments. And what I do, is I just hit that next comment button and I look at all of the comments. I would say 90-95% of the comments my editor this time has put in my document are small line edits, like this doesn’t make sense. What about what happened in the last scene? How does this fit? They’re small things. This editor tends to give me all the big ideas that I have to spend a lot of time thinking about in the revision letter, not inside the body of the document, which is fantastic, but in the past, what I’ve had, is editors who will leave the really big ideas as comments in your manuscript. Totally great. Just as long as they’re somewhere. So what I do before I start any work is I look at every comment and make sure she hasn’t snuck one in there that is, that is like, you know, get rid of this character, or get rid of this storyline. So I scanned my eye down those and make sure I don’t need to make any more post-its I think I only got two or three from that process this morning. And then you kind of sit down with these post-it’s, you sit down with your sentence outline, and that’s when you brainstorm that’s when you start to scribble all over the sentence outline, how can I make this post it happen? Where in the manuscript can I do that? How can I do that- for me, it’s always, when I’m writing thriller, apparently it’s always about increasing suspense because I like to hang out with emotions, not suspense. The suspense is not an emotion. So for me, it’s really about looking at that sentence outline. Where can I increase suspense and decrease relaxation, decrease the break intention. So that’s what I was doing today. And it’s so fun. It’s so fun. And then what you do is you just open your document and you start with revising and you go from there looking at your map, it’s all mapped out. You know, what’s going to happen in the next scene, what you need to fix, you’re going to have ideas on the way. Yay. More post-it’s. I should just call this the post it program. Honestly, you know that I have a problem. It’s such a good problem to have. Okay. So that’s enough about revision. I hope this has answered any questions you might have about getting a revision letter from an editor. It’s not scary. It’s a process. It can hurt. Definitely. This time, this revision letter didn’t hurt because I got the first revision letter verbally just saying, fix the mess you made, which I did. 



[00:09:47] So, what else did I want to tell you? Oh, if you like these tips, you can always become a Patron, at patreon.com/Rachael, R, A, C, H, A, E, L, at the $5 level a month and up, you get to ask me any questions about writing and I will answer them on the podcast in a mini episode. Nobody asks this question about the revision and letter. So it was just in a regular podcast but I figured some of you might be wondering what you do when you get that dreaded, feared and awesome revision letter. I will be recording an episode next week, got a couple of questions. So if you have any, and you are one of the $5 and up Patrons, please leave me any of your writing questions or really, you know, any questions at all. I’m pretty much an open book. 



[00:10:31] Thank you. Speaking of Patreon, to new patrons, Evan Oliver, who has already sent some questions, and Marie, thank you. And Lisa Lucky. I really appreciate your patronage. It means that what I am doing is important to you and I am so grateful to all of my patrons over at Patreon. It is, it’s literally the difference in me being able to afford the time to do this kind of thing, and to write those essays that I write for you and not doing them. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think that’s what I wanted to tell you before we get into this interview with Eddie King, please enjoy this innovative approach to publishing. He’s kind of pushing some old boundaries here, so I hope you enjoy it. And I wish you very, very, very happy writing my friends.



[00:11:24] 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: [00:12:06] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Eddie King, all the way from Germany, Eddie, how are you?

Eddie King: [00:12:08] I’m good. Thank you very much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:10] I’m so excited to have you. You are a writer who is doing something I have not seen any other writer do. So we’re going to have time to talk about that towards the end of our time. Super exciting. And let me give a little bio for you. Eddie King is an author, screenwriter and television presenter. Born and raised in Hampstead, London. He spent many years working in the film industry as a producer and script consultant on large-budget Hollywood productions. He is a prominent ambassador of- this is so weird, Eddie, and I love it, of American country music across Europe and co-hosts a weekly primetime television series, where he interviews some of Nashville’s biggest stars. Eddie has written five novels on the contemporary romance genre, his first books, “Spoilt for Choice” earned him a Young Writers’ Award nomination, and “Southern Girl: Daisy Dukes and Cowboy Boots” has been adapted for screen. He currently splits his time between London, Los Angeles, and Nashville. I am a, I’m a huge country fan, but old country. I’m not so into the new country. And I was raised, 

Eddie King: [00:13:17] the old country, the Johnny Cash. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:21] Yeah. Or even some of the stuff today that’s coming out but sounds a little bit older. I actually wrote out a romance trilogy about three countries, singing sisters, which remains probably my favorite romance I’ve ever written. And I was looking at the cover of Southern Girl and it looks like one of my books. It’s pretty awesome.

Eddie King: [00:13:41] Well I like to think country music is a love story, right? It’s a 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] Exactly. And you can have an entire romance novel inside one song. Your bio does not say that you’re a song writer. Have you ever attempted that? 

Eddie King: [00:13:56] No, not yet either I’m not very good musically. So,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:03] What drew you to this is not on our list of things to talk about, but what drew you to country music in the first place?

Eddie King: [00:14:08] I think just growing up, I always listened to sort of the, there’s always Johnny Cash playing around my house and a little bit of Rockabilly, and rock and roll and they got into it. And I started visiting Nashville and I fell in love with the new country as well. So, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:26] Yeah.

Eddie King: [00:14:27] A little bit of everything so, and it was weird because, you know, I’d come back to London and nobody knew about any of these stars and they were like huge in the US, right? So,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:39] Interesting.

Eddie King: [00:14:40] It was, yeah, it was. It was very interesting. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:43] Did you see that recent mashup video? I think it’s just called Country Music and it basically has all the stars in it? From Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, to all the new people. Have you seen that?

Eddie King: [00:14:55] Yes I have seen that.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] It’s so gorgeous. I don’t know how new it is. Maybe it come out months ago but I just thought the other day.

Eddie King: [00:15:02] It’s a really nice. It’s already a nice sort of community. I used to work and the film industry out in LA and that was, you know, it’s still in the entertainment genre. But when you move to work in country music out in Nashville, people are so different and so nice and so welcoming and yeah, and it was something new because, you know, you’re, we had like a big gap in country music, so it was nice, guys in the US and bring some of that back.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:28] That is so awesome. I was supposed to be in Nashville two months ago, but Covid got in the way and I still haven’t been, it’s definitely like a bucket list item for me to go to the Bluebird. Okay. Well, let’s talk about you and your books because you are a busy fella and you’re still getting books done. What is your writing process? What, how and where, and how much all of that. 

Eddie King: [00:15:50] Well, it differs every time. Usually it’s kind of a, at a pub or a bar or maybe a coffee shop. I liked a bit of background noise. Some sort of distraction to get your mind off of it. And it really just matters. I know people say you should keep it of a 9 to 5 schedule and I base a week, but that just doesn’t work for me. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:16] I don’t agree with the should’s. That’s why I like the show. We don’t, we don’t worry about the should’s. 

Eddie King: [00:16:23] Yeah. So whenever I’m in the mood, I usually go around sort of 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM and I’ll sit there until I’m done. And that’s usually about sort of 5, 6:00 PM. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:37] How have things changed since Covid though, since you can’t go out? 

Eddie King: [00:16:40] It’s been tough. Yeah. It’s I think that it’s been, it’s been a bit of both sort of, it’s nice where you can just sit in your pajamas all day and just write from your couch. I should be sitting up at my desk and writing, especially when there’s deadlines coming in, but, yeah, it’s a, but things over here, I’m out in Germany at the moment and everything’s back to normal pretty much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:05] Really?

Eddie King: [00:17:06] Everything’s open. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:08] Can you, you actually go sit in the pub now?

Eddie King: [00:17:11] Yes, yes, yes. So I just take my laptop. The weather has been nice here and you can sit outside as well, so. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:19] That must be really nice. I miss, I miss things. Yeah. America, we’re not, we’re not handling this whole thing very well, so it’s going to be a bit longer. Okay. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Eddie King: [00:17:35] There’s so many and there’s new one every day. I think 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:40] It’s the truth. 

Eddie King: [00:17:42] Probably like everyone says the editing process. You send your book off and you’ve got your baby that you’ve been working on, comes back with so many revisions and every time I think, okay, they’re going to come back and say, it’s perfect. Don’t change anything. Yeah. But every time it’s like, all right, take this chapter out, take this character out. This doesn’t work. I spend a lot of time on that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:05] You have no idea how hard I worked for that. And I love that you say that. I always think that, that this time I’m sending it away and I’ve nailed it. 

Eddie King: [00:18:13] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:14] I’m always thinking and then I’m supposed to get a revision back on Monday. And I now know like, Oh, it’s going to be bad again.

Eddie King: [00:18:21] And the bad thing is that they’re usually right, so.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:25] Yes, they are.

Eddie King: [00:18:26] That’s, that’s always the process to sort of, admit it, you have to say it, well.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:31] How long does it take you to realize that this particular editing letters right again? 

Eddie King: [00:18:40] Again, it’s different, you know, with Southern Girl, I was convinced that you know, I wanted to release a sort of a writer’s cut version of it because I was not happy with, but sort of when the sales started coming in and I was like, okay, well maybe they were right.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:04] I’m going to steal that idea for my students. Like, if you really hate those editing ideas, just put your book aside into a writer’s cut. You can always share that later for lots of money

Eddie King: [00:19:13] Yeah. Nobody’s gonna read it, but you know, at least put it out.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:18] And psychologically you have it. And then they’ll see also, we all see after we do our edits, we’re like, oh yeah, the book is a lot better now. 

Eddie King: [00:19:30] Yeah, I mean, I’ve got all types of ending for most on my books

Rachael Herron: [00:19:35] You know, that’s funny. I have alternative books for most of my books. I rewrite so much. What is your biggest joy? 

Eddie King: [00:19:43] What’s the biggest what? Sorry. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Oh, What’s your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Eddie King: [00:19:48] I think when it all comes together, right, there’s always sort of points when you’re writing and you’re just, you think, Oh, actually this works, and sort of things that surprise you while you’re writing. So usually have a plan of what you wanted, where you want to take the story, but then something pops in your head, take it in that direction and it works. Yeah. And then when you sort of stopped connecting with characters that you were writing, I think that definitely whether you’d like them or hate them, if you have any feeling about the characters that you’re right. That’s always a nice feeling because you sort of, kind of, as a writer, you live in this world where there’s all these fictional characters around you. When you, kind of see that they’re real people in your head, that’s, that’s fun. That’s a good proper writing I would say.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:43] That’s such a delicious feeling to think of them as friends and to kind of miss them.

Eddie King: [00:20:48] The sad thing as well, but 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:50] Yeah,

Eddie King: [00:20:51] The writers’ well

Rachael Herron: [00:20:53] Speaking of your plans moving as the characters take you, are you more of a planner? A plotter or are you more of a seat of your pants or something in between? 

Eddie King: [00:21:04] I try to plan more and more and it does help. And I’ve been trying to get into this habit of, before I stopped having a solid plan, but I hardly ever stick to it or something to preach. And a lot of the stories are right at to current affairs as well. So you have to, dig in, just what’s happening around you. And I’m very impatient, so if I hear something or if I see a truth about character, I just want to get it in this book. I didn’t think about sort of two or three books. I tried just cram everything and 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:40] I really believe in that. I really believe and if it wasn’t Annie Dillard said something like, Save nothing. Keep nothing back. And it was much, it was a beautiful, long quote, but you know, I’ll spend it all play it all. Because as soon as you spend it all and play it all, and put it in this book, you, you know, we all have that worry. Like, well, the next book won’t have anything, but it backfills with these new ideas. Yeah. I love that. Can you share a craft tip of any sort of as regards to writing? 

Eddie King: [00:22:14] I would say. There’s no right way of doing anything. And I’ll explain that a little bit. I think a lot of people, starting out with writing, they, you know, they do all this research of how to write and even how to format stuff. And I try to break, I deliberately going to break the rules, but I think, you know, those rules are there to be sort of bent and you can play with English and you can, you can just do whatever you want. There’s no right way of doing it. And there’s no one way of doing it. And as great as all these sort of writing books are, and stuff, I think the advice I give to all sort of new writers and young writers is just go out there and just write and just start, just get pen to paper, just get words out there and you pick it up along the way. I mean, look at Shakespeare the greatest writer, you know, he just made words up the way he wanted to.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:16] He made a lot of words and he made a lot of them up. Yeah.

Eddie King: [00:23:19] Yeah. So I think you can play around sort of being a fiction writer, anyways, you can play around with words and sentence structure and a lot of, sort of the stuff I write kind of sentences border into poetry. And so I think, you know, there’s a lot of space there to do what you want and you should just be yourself and not try and imitate anyone else. Yeah. I think that would be it. There’s no rules with writing and just be yourself. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:50] That is such a huge tip that it is not one that we talk about a lot. We talk a lot about the specific ways to be better, be stronger. All of these things, you know, what books we should read. And we read all of the books and we listen to podcasts like this. But what we forget is that we’re all completely unique. But the one thing that we all share is that we learned how to do it by doing it. 

Eddie King: [00:24:13] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:14] None of us learned everything by reading all of the books, putting it together, perfectly in our brains and being able to sit down and do it. We all had to learn on the job. 

Eddie King: [00:24:16] Exactly. And that’s the best way of doing it. Plus, get all your comments right.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:28] That is for someone else. I always think that is what a copy editor is for, they are not that expensive, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They can, every time I get copied edits back, I’m like, I am the world’s worst writer. Like I have no idea what a comma is, you know, I think I do. I don’t.

Eddie King: [00:24:43] Yeah, that’s so funny.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:40] Well, and then you have that frustrating thing where different copy editors do things differently. You’re like, I just learned how to do this, then you’re doing it differently. Yeah. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Eddie King: [00:24:052 I think maybe well, unsurprisingly people I think just, I think people inspire me. I sort of, I’m one of those people that goes and sits down and just people watches and that’s how I get inspiration for actually writing. And then somebody might come into your life and they’re just sort of this, this force. And that sort of encourages me to write. I use people as muses all the time, whether they know it or not. Love again, you know, I’m one of those people that falls in love three or four times a day with people. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:35] Me too

Eddie King: [00:25:36] So that really encourages me to write and then probably more surprisingly music as well. I take a lot of inspiration from music. And I often have songs in my head while I’m writing and I sort of play them over and over again, and it could be anything from sort of a gangster, rap song to get me all pumped up to sort of some classical music to calm me down or a little bit of Taylor Swift, you know, just why not. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:09] I really liked her latest documentary. That was good. 

Eddie King: [00:26:13] Yeah, and I think, again, she’s such a times at songwriter. And I think there’s so much talent in music and just the stories and they get to tell a story in such a short amount of time, so, yeah. Music, surprisingly, people not so surprising. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:31] It’s interesting. Would you agree that, and this is a thesis I’m just making right now, so I could be wrong, but would you agree that most writers have to be somehow in love with people? I think there are some legends, yeah, I think there are some, probably some curmudgeonly writers that aren’t, and perhaps they write because they kind of hate people. Maybe we fall into different camps, but I am one of those like you, I fall in love constantly with I’m in love with you right now, you know, you’re going to be inspiring something that I do later. 

Eddie King: [00:27:05] But that’s the thing, even if you hate somebody, there is an element of love in it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:12] Yes.

Eddie King: [00:27:13] Love is sort of a feeling of passion and

Rachael Herron: [00:27:16] Fascination

Eddie King: [00:27:17] So if you actively go out and hate everyone, there’s something loving about that in a weird way as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:26] Yes. In terms of intention, yeah.

Eddie King: [00:27:26] But yeah, I mean. I think you can’t- you can’t write characters and you can’t write about people without loving them or loving the idea of the diversity of the world really 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:42] And loving them completely, including all the flaws that we have to build into our characters. We don’t write books with perfect people. 

Eddie King: [00:27:50] Exactly. And, you know, there’s that old phrase that writers feel more, writers love more, writers hate more. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:59] I’ve never heard that. And I love it. 

Eddie King: [00:28:02] Yeah. It’s kind of true. I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:04] Yeah

Eddie King: [00:28:005] all the time, so

Rachael Herron: [00:28:07] My wife calls that being a drama queen, but everything affection, 

Eddie King: [00:28:14] I get told that as well, all the time. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:16] Maybe that’s what writers have in common. What is the best book you read recently? And why did you love it? 

Eddie King: [00:28:26] I should be reading more. I, you know, that’s one thing is a, that’s one of my flaws. I just don’t read enough. But then when I do read, I sort of read everything from an author in one sitting. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:40] So you’re a binge reader

Eddie King: [00:28:41] Yeah. But sort of author wise. So I, recently re-read all of Fitzgerald’s, but yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:50] Oh really?

Eddie King: [00:28:52] Yeah. And there was a collection of short stories called Flappers and Philosophers. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:54] I just saw that the other day. 

Eddie King: [00:28:58] Yeah. and so I read that recently. I really enjoyed it, but I had sort of mixed feelings as well after that. Cause I, I read it, I enjoyed it. And I thought, okay. That it’s been a while since I’ve read some of this, some of them I haven’t read, but then I saw a show like Amazon or Netflix show about Zelda Fitzgerald. And it’s sort of a mini documentary about Fitzgerald, he was, he didn’t come across as the nicest person in the sort of in the series. So it kind of put a bit of a sour taste.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:32] That’s difficult. Yeah. That’s difficult to put those. I hate it when a favorite author lets me down in some big way. Well, not over some other ones. Okay. So now is the time that we talk about you, and what you’re doing, where people can find you, but please tell us about this latest book that just came out this week as record- as we record, so it’ll be about two weeks when it goes out. And what is different about this book? 

Eddie King: [00:30:00] What isn’t different about this,

Rachael Herron: [00:30:03] First, tell us the title. 

Eddie King: [00:30:01] Yeah, it’s called the Lost Romantics. So it’s about three friends, three wealthy friends from London that are trying to navigate sort of love, modern love and relationships in the digital world with sort of Tinder and Bumble, and instead of, and it’s, the concept is that these guys are tired of swiping. They’re tired of online dating. They’re tired of sort of not going out on real dates. So they’re coming together to bring romance back. To make romance cool again, as it was right again. But yeah, so I think there’s, sort of a lot of people I feel anyways, or they will be in this sort of early to mid-thirties that are kind of rebelling against social media and updating and online dating. And it’s been fun for a while and it’s been a new thing, but this is nostalgia factor that kicks in, and everyone’s sort of remembers the old times and, you know, going out and picking up a girl at her house for a date. Taking her, you know, having dinner and you know, it’s sounds like such a simple thing, but a lot of the time, these days it’s, they’ll meet at the bar, have a drink at lunchtime or something. You know, it’s a,

Rachael Herron: [00:31:30] Yeah

Eddie King: [00:31:32] I think those stories of romance are at risk. And you know, I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a different thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:42] Is this a, is this a trilogy or will all three friends end up in the end with love? 

Eddie King: [00:31:48] Well, you’ll have to stay tuned. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:51] Okay. And how do we stay tuned? 

Eddie King: [00:31:54] Yeah. Well, that’s a weird thing. I mean, this book is actually available for free, on Instagram if you follow @thelostromantics or you follow me @eddieleeking. I publish, I think, 10 to 15 pages a day at the moment. And it’s just the next chapters that keeping coming out, coming out.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:18] And it’s in the stories function.

Eddie King: [00:32:21] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:32:22] So basically your, your most recent pictures on your feed, basically say how to go to the stories and you have this really clever thing. So a story, you know, a story only lasts for a few seconds. But you have that little heart to kind of show where a right handed person would put their thumb. 

Eddie King: [00:32:40] Yeah, I’ve got all those people telling me, you know, I can’t read that fast cause you only get sort of 10 seconds. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:46] But you explain it clearly! They were not reading directions.

Eddie King: [00:32:50] So there’s a little heart in the corner where you put your thumb, you rest your thumb, and it holds the page. And you can read the whole book it’s in the highlights section story.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:01] Yeah. So you keep the highlights those are always there. We’ll, I just think it’s such a fascinating model. And what I really love about it is, the tension that you hold between these people wanting out of social media and swiping and everything like this but, 

Eddie King: [00:33:14] Yeah I mean, that’s, the irony it’s not lost for me

Rachael Herron: [00:33:19] Well, I love it. I think it’s, it feels really intentional to make the reader think about what is going on in the book while they’re holding their phone. What will happen when all of the pages are in, will you then publish the book as well as a standalone or where you always have to go through Instagram? 

Eddie King: [00:33:38] Yeah, I know. So this is kind of just for the release. So there’s three books at the moment and there’ll be released over Instagram, but I think the first book is available on Amazon.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:55] Oh, it is? okay.

Eddie King: [00:33:56] In a copy, I think in two weeks. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:58] Okay

Eddie King: [00:34:00] And then in bookstores, I should know this, but I think it’s around six weeks. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:08] Is this your idea to do this, or is it your publisher’s idea, or?

Eddie King: [00:34:13] It was actually my publishers and I, you know, I have to admit this was another thing I was totally against because I was like first of all, I was like, how are we going to give this book away for free? And then it was sort of, I’m a big fan of sort of paperbacks and hardbacks and actual physical books. And I’ve always thought that corner, or, you know, I don’t even like reading eBooks or audio books. I’ve never sort of got into it. So I was against the idea from the beginning. But then like everything, sort of they broke me down and it sort of kind of made sense. And I liked the fact that it is free, for people to go out there read because you know, times are tough, especially now with Covid and everything. Spending eight, nine pounds or $12 on a book, you know it’s a luxury sometimes, and it’s a whole new book as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:13] Think the thing, it’s a whole new audience and I think the thing that I hope that you find is that you’re, I’ve seen this with friends when they publish a book on their blog, like in pieces is people still buy the book. 

Eddie King: [00:34:26] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:35:27] And these people, will be like, well, I kind of wanted to reread that chapter and I don’t want to go back through the stories, I’ll just buy the book. And they are going to be telling their friends and it’s such a fascinating model.

Eddie King: [00:35:37] Yeah and that’s the thing, you know a lot of sort of a, you know, when I write, I write for a certain audience and, you know, that’s completely the different audience that I get. But you know, people spend so much time on Instagram or on social media looking at sort of all sorts of rubbish. Yeah. This is sort of a way to say, well, actually I’m doing something good on my phone. I’m actually reading book.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:03] Yes

Eddie King: [00:36:04] and you know, it’s in the Instagram, you know, you’ve got all of your friends, things and vacation pictures and all sorts of things. So it’s nice to break it up a little bit with a story as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:17] And I get, I personally get really stuck in stories. I really, really like them. So, and in fact, 

Eddie King: [00:36:23] It just keeps going on and on, right

Rachael Herron: [00:36:24] Yeah, exactly, they just keep turning. In fact, I’m going to try to remember today, and also when this comes out to put your first page in my stories so that people can see that that would be really cool. And that’s what a great way to share too. Like free book. Here you go.

Eddie King: [00:36:39] Oh yeah, that’s sort of the idea, and sort of a lot of brands, and a lot of influences and people are mentioned within the books, sort of from a mass view of point, they all share and it gets bigger in that way so

Rachael Herron: [00:36:51] And you can tag them on those pages when they’re shared. 

Eddie King: [00:36:57] Exactly, so 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:58] Oh my mind is blank. I’m never ever going to do this. This sounds like a nightmare to administer 

Eddie King: [00:37:04] I mean yeah, the logistics items, I couldn’t even get it formatted. Yeah. Me trying to put a story together is a nightmare. So luckily, it goes that.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:13] The format is beautiful. The format is really well done. I think, it’s just 

Eddie King: [00:37:17] I mean, you know, it’s not, it’s, on such a small screen, sometimes it well, it must be hard to read, but I think they’ve got the balance right, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:26] They got the balance right. These are, these are 47-year-old eyes. And as soon as I see something that’s a little bit too small, I leave it. I’ll pick up a book in the bookstore and go, well, can’t read that. And yours was like, Oh, I’m in it. I’m reading. So, yeah. Fabulous. Okay. So tell us again where we can find you and all of these things. 

Eddie King: [00:37:44] Yes. So Instagram is probably the best way to go. So the book’s called the Lost Romantics and the handle is @thelostromantics and me, you can find also an Instagram @eddieleeking. And the book is published on both places and you can find out information about like my previous books and upcoming books and all sorts of stuff. That’s probably the best way.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:08] Thank you for being here and for being so different. 

Eddie King: [00:38:14] Thank you for having me. Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:38:17] Of course, I’ve never interviewed an author, an author just like you. And I enjoy that.

Eddie King: [00:38:24] That’s a good thing

Rachael Herron: [00:38:25] So it’s been a wonderful thing. I was really looking forward to this interview and you did not disappoint. So thank you so much for being here and happy writing and may it fly from the Instagram and also the paid for shelves.

Eddie King: [00:38:27] That’s so cool.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:40] Thanks, Eddie

Eddie King: [00:38:41] Alright. Take care.

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. 187: Eddie King on Why There’s No Right Way of Writing appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 185: Should I Look for an Agent for my Debut or Self-Publish It? (Bonus! How To Be an Anti-Racist)

Ep. 185: Should I Look for an Agent for my Debut or Self-Publish It? (Bonus! How To Be an Anti-Racist)

Rachael answers Tuomas’s question about what to do when you want to be a hybrid author, with a foot in both camps – trad- and self-publishing.

Also – if you’re white, what you can do to be anti-racist AS A WRITER! This goes beyond allyship (centering BIPOC voices) and activism (protesting, donating to BIPOC-led organizations) Anti-racism is the act of opposing ALL white supremacy including the racism inside you and within the system you live in.

Transcript

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

[00:00:14] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #185 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so glad you’re here with me on this mini episode, which might not be so many when I’m done with it. We’ll see what happens. Let me look at my notes here. But in news of what’s going on around here, the book is done. I’m sorry that I wasn’t with you last Friday. I got up to about Thursday night and thought, huh? There’s not going to be a podcast tomorrow. That’s okay. Next week, we’ll go back to having a normal interview section. But honestly, I haven’t interviewed anybody in a couple of weeks because of the revisions I was doing on the thriller, Hush Little Baby. And I am so excited that I got it done. It ended up, so basically I wrote the book, I did my big revisions myself, send it to my editor and she sent back the big revision, which wasn’t even a manuscript that she had marked up. Then the revisions I needed to do were bigger than that. They were harder than that. It was a verbal conversation in which I took notes on what she wanted me to change to the book. 



[00:01:22] Everything that she wanted me to change made the book a better book. It did mean that I took out about 38,000 words and added I think 42,000 words. I keep forgetting the numbers. I have them written down somewhere. So now the book is 97,000 words long, and there are 93,000 words in the trash. So I’ve written two books to get this one book out. It is the book I plotted more than any other book I’ve ever plotted that a full synopsis, just this, the synopsis was broken and none of us saw it. I didn’t see it. My agent didn’t see it. My editor didn’t see it. I was trying to get away with something. I didn’t know I was trying to get away with something, but I was doing some hand-waving when I turned in that synopsis, like I wrote some good sentences and I promised to pull off something that I don’t think anybody could have done. But my language was good enough that they bought it and I bought it and I couldn’t write it. So that is why this book has been a little bit extreme but I got it done this Monday, 10 minutes until New York close, which was my deadline was Monday. So cut it in in time. It is truly astonishing to me how I can put something off till, it’s like this timer pops up in my brain. It’s this panic timer. And it says, okay, you have screwed off enough. You don’t have another second to waste screwing off anything. So that’s when you know, 14, 15, I think 15 days in a row without stopping all day, every day, I’d had four weeks to do the revision and I did it in the last two weeks because that’s what my body knows I can pull off. The exciting thing about that is it, at the very last minute, I came up with a framing device that I had not thought of. So in the last three days, I’m trying to pull off this framing device. I think it worked great, but it was one of those things that reminded me that we never really know what our books are meant to be.



[00:03:25] There is a possibility that my editor is reading my book right this very minute and she’s thinking, oh no, this isn’t what I wanted either. This isn’t a good book yet. And I might have to do this all over again. But I’m pretty confident that the next round of edits will just be lying in it. And that will be such a joy. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of weeks off while she reads that. And I have been thinking about the next book, which is a large revision of a collection of essays that I have been trying to figure out how to make into an actual memoir. And yesterday I was writing with the Rachael Says Write Group and it was awesome. It was so good to be there, not working on my revision of the novel, but working on this problem. And suddenly it occurred to me and I, it was one of those moments of revelation where everything fit together. All of a sudden I saw the structure that was behind this collection of essays. Which I just hadn’t seen because I had forgotten the cardinal rule, which is I can revise anything. And these essays will need revision in order to pull off this structure. But it will end those essays will end up being more true. They will reflect a more, a bigger, and deeper truth of my life. And I know I’m kind of being vague about this, but the working title for that now, it has been replenished, it was a collection of 12 essays over the course of the year that I tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Basically, this was a couple of years ago and the working title now is, Replenish How Fixing Creative Burnout Accidentally Saved My Life. Don’t you want to pick that up? I want to pick that up. And I remembered, oh yeah, I could read by these essays to show what was really happening while I was writing them. Ooh, it’s exciting.  



[00:05:19] I also just, this afternoon, got a very strange and interesting offer from somebody that might change the course of my publishing career. I don’t know yet. I’m so overwhelmed by the thought of it that I don’t know what to do with it. So you know what I’m doing? I’m doing nothing with it. I said, thank you for the offer. I will think about it and I will get back to you. And sometimes that’s all you can do. So that is exciting. And again, I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t, but if it happens, if it becomes something, you will know. 



[00:05:55] We are going to get to a question from Thoumas, who is one of the $5 patrons who is using me as a mini coach. I don’t have too many other questions right now. So you $5 patrons, please send me all your questions. I’m your mini coach. Let me mini coach you. But before we get to Thoumas’s question, I want to lay something on you that I have been laying on my classes for the last week or two. I have not communicated with you in a couple of weeks because I’ve been on deadline.



[00:06:24] The other reason is because the world exploded in a big, huge necessary way. And it can be very hard when things are upside down to get our work done. We were already struggling with that with COVID-19, and now that the world has shifted in a big, important way, it can be even harder to consider why is my work important? Why am I spending the time doing this? I am writing a, you know, sweet Amish. Let’s make it a sweet, Amish fantasy novel with dragons. So you’re writing that. Oh my God. I hope somebody is writing that. Those, those authors are coming to me saying, what, what does it matter? How am I helping change the world? If I’m writing a sweet, Amish fantasy romance about dragon is number one, obviously, you’re going to make people happy by reading- writing that but, but honestly, it’s in these moments that we have to remember that we are artists for a reason. You are a writer because you can’t not be a writer. You are a writer who was the kind of person who listens to podcasts in their time off of writing and the rest of their lives, because you want to fill your brain with writing things. It’s the thing you can’t get enough of. You are called to be a writer because you are called to communicate. And I truly believe that with every word that we write as writers, with every sentence that we get better and stronger at our craft, those words are changing us as human beings and they are emboldening us and bolstering us and making us better humans and they are making us stronger in the fight that we must fight. It does not matter what the hell you are writing. I am writing a silly thriller about a pregnant woman who another woman tries to steal her baby. This is not going to change the world. My last thriller was about police brutality. Hey, Hey. So that one, I feel a little bit differently about it. I’m like, Oh, I hope it changes some people’s minds. This one is not it’s, it’s an escape for people.



[00:08:55] And the thing is escape is really, really, really important. You provide the service of giving a piece of art to someone and it can get them through their darkest night. It can get them through the hospital stay, or when they’re waiting at the hospital for their loved one to come out of surgery, you have done something incredibly important. You have changed somebody with your words, even more than that insanely awesome thing. You, as an artist, as a writer, have this power and almost unfortunately, this responsibility to share your truth with other people. Every word you write in your fiction makes you better at doing that. Every word you write in your nonfiction makes you better at doing that. I am not advocating that you are the one. You’re the one who should go on Facebook and fix your racist uncle Frank, because you can’t fix racist uncle Frank, you can’t change him. Our words are not used that way. We cannot build a battalion of words that can win that particular war. It just doesn’t happen like that. What our words do, and what we as writers do, is to inspire other people to be a little bit braver than they were before they heard you or before they read you. That is the power of word. You bring your idea to somebody and by doing so you empower them to say something to someone else to change a little bit in their world. And that is incredible. 



[00:10:41] And so at this point in this podcast, I want to speak to my fellow white people who have been really, really shaken up by some of this. I have been working in the anti-racist arena for a little while now. This is not new to me, however, I am talking to a lot of people right now for whom words like white privilege, white fragility. They are big, hurtful, scary words. And the first time you screw something up, when you are talking about systemic racism, oh my gosh, it hurts the first time that you, as a white person, I’m speaking just to you, white people right now. The first time you were hit with that white fragility stick, it hurts. You go into a cave and you rant and you rave and you say to everyone, I’m not a racist. I’m not a racist. This is look at me. I’m good, I’m a good person. This is when I just talked to you about the four stages of becoming anti-racist because it’s not enough just to be not a racist. P.S., we’re all racists. Like all of us white people are racist. That’s very hard to hear at the beginning. I know that I just lost some of you by switching it up, but just stick around for a minute because I’m going to answer Thoumas’ question about hybrid publishing. Don’t you want to hear that? Yes, you do. The first stage though, is awareness. The awareness that we live in a racist society. Merriam Webster just changed their definition this week. I didn’t look it up before the show. But it talks about racism being a system. Because you are white, doesn’t mean that you had an easy life. It doesn’t mean that you weren’t raised poor with an abusive family and had to fight for every single thing in your life. It doesn’t mean that. It only means that your life wasn’t harder because your skin color was darker than white. That is white privilege. And when you first become aware of that, when first, somebody first told you that, you definitely want to go into a shell. And if you’re just starting to kind of peek your way out of that shell, if anti-racism is new to you, welcome. It’s awesome out here working to dismantle that and it’s hard and it’s scary, but awareness is where it starts. And when you start realizing that racism is a problem that needs to be fixed. And it’s you who are going to do something to help dismantle that you can no longer be a bystander in this. 



[00:13:21] The second stage of being coming an- four stages of becoming an anti-racist, after you’re aware that maybe you could be one, the second stage is just education and I want to pull up this week’s New York times list. It came out a Wednesday. Number one on the list is White Fragility, which is an amazing book, which if you haven’t read, you should read it as by Robin DiAngelo. Number one, apparently they’ve sold out of these books all over the country. Traditional publishing is scrambling to republish these books, but you know what, you can get out on your e-book or from your library. The second one is, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which is also fantastic. And then the third one is How to Be An Anti-Racist, which I would, it’s my favorite that’s the one I would recommend is by you from Ibram X Kendi. But all three of them are incredible. And that’s just your next job just to get a little bit of education so that you can learn what you don’t know. We don’t know what we don’t know until we find out. So your job is to be looking to the bi- BiPAP community, which stands for black indigenous and people of color. Watching what they have done watching the documentaries, where they are speaking, reading the books in which they tell you things. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. People have been doing this work for a long time. Welcome in, see where you can join up, a but, number- but the first half to be comment, a little bit educated, I’ll try to put a link in the show notes for a Google doc that was circulating last week on where you can start. If you just have 5 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day to ask us to be uncomfortable is insignificant. When it comes to people of color and what, how they are inconvenienced and made uncomfortable all day, every day in the society. 



[00:15:26] So the third stage is self-interrogation. And this is where you take what you’ve learned and you start to interrogate the ways in which you work in the world. You ask yourself the hard questions. This is also where yes, screw up. I had a, had a doozy earlier this week. I was in a class and a woman was talking about, and I don’t want to get too personal with this. I can’t give details, but she is now living a life where discrimination is going to happen to her in a big way for the rest of her life. And we were talking about that discomfort and I said something to her. I said, well, you know, there comes a time in our lives when we don’t, when we, when we get comfortable with living without discrimination. And the fact that you are now the focus of discrimination, is one of those things, which is making your life so difficult right now in which is making your book so difficult to write about it. And an awesome student of mine put her hand up and said, Rachael, I need to disagree with you. I, as a black woman face this discrimination every day of my life. It is not something that will go away or that will get easier you just learn how to say fuck off. And that was a place in which I was talking to a white woman, white woman to white woman. And I forgot that my experience is not mirrored by her experience. We tend to as white people, because this is what we have been trained to do by our entire society. We tend to center ourselves and make ourselves the most important person in the room forgetting that we are not, and our experiences need to be de-centered so that we can make room for the people who have not been heard for so long, to listen to them and we are going to screw this up and it’s gonna hurt. And in that instance, I got to say, well, I’m sorry. That is, I was just absolutely being a person full of white privilege thinking in my head that I knew everything and that’s complete baloney. Let’s just call it bullshit. And I think white person to white person here, I’m talking to only my white listeners right now. 



[00:17:46] This is the point at which when you’re in this stage of self-interrogation of learning about where you are on the anti-racist spectrum, is where you need to get comfortable with screwing up and apologizing clearly and trying to do better next time. This is never a place for a rationalization, but I thought it was being, but I thought I was, no there’s none of that. Just I screwed up. I’m sorry. I try to do better next time. 



[00:18:13] And the fourth stage, the final stage is community action. And I believe that as an anti-racist, I only have one job in community action, and that is to help encourage other white people to begin their own journey of becoming an anti-racist. This is what I should do now, which is why I’m talking to you, fellow white person, perhaps it’s time for you to start your journey of anti-racism. I got all of this from a, a starter kit online, which I will also link in the show notes. This is a fantastic time to start learning, and this is a fantastic time to be a writer and you may be really feeling moved to use your words, to fight right now, from the coziness and the safety of your home, where you are sheltering in place. These are things to keep in mind and be aware of, as we work for a better future. We have already really screwed it up in the United States and I truly believe that we can’t put band aids on anymore. We can’t do those easy fixes. This is the time to actually do the difficult work. And I am pleased that I can speak to you about this and I want to, I want you just to think about who you can speak to, in your community.



[00:19:48] And let’s talk about books. Okay, Thoumas says my long term goal is to be a hybrid author. I like the idea of having full control over my books, but I also like the idea of being traditionally published with this in mind, assuming I’m good enough to be traditionally published, which I have no idea if I am. Do you think it would be better to self-publish my debut book or to look for an agent?  Such a common question Thoumas, and I’m going to respond to it in a way in which I have heard other people say that they do not like. But I’m going to say it anyway. I like to use and I like to encourage people to use agent querying agents as kind of a test for your book. So if you would like to be traditionally published because it’ll make you feel good because it is a cache that you particularly want. You want to see your book on a shelf in Barnes and Noble, if they exist in the future. That’s totally, totally fine. You can want that just for the sake of wanting it. You never have to justify that to anybody. Give yourself a number of rejections that you will accept before you start to question this book a little bit more. This can be done at any stage in your journey to publication after your, of course your book is written and revised as, as good as you can make it. I don’t believe you need to get an editor to help you fix your book before you go on the agent search, because agents often act as that first editor. There, they’re often happy to do that. They’re not always happy to do that, but they’re often happy to do that. 



[00:21:32] That is not to say that you can’t hire an editor before you start an agent search. That is also often done and can be very advantageous. I always recommend Reedsy.com, if you want to go there and look for an editor before you go to print agent. But after you’re good and set your query letters set in stone, it’s beautiful. Perhaps you’ve sent it to me for my query service. Just go to RachaelHerron.com/query. I am glad that I stuck that in there. Then ask yourself, how many rejections do you want before you start reevaluating this book? Is it 25? Is it 50? Perhaps if you get 25 form rejections or just a no answer, which counts as a rejection, either your query letter is not working, well, if it’s form and you’ve not been asked for a partial or a full manuscript, there’s something wrong with your query letter. Or the idea behind your book. If it is an idea that has been, you know, if nobody’s buying a vampire book right now and I’m actually not sure if that’s true or not, I have no idea where vampires are right now, but it could be that you are querying a vampire book in the time when all of agents, agent has said, I’m not going to pick up a vampire, but because none of the publishers are buying vampire books. Then that is not a reflection on your query. But in, in other cases you want to see, is my query letter are actually good enough. If they’re asking for full and partial manuscripts, then my query letter is good enough. And if they don’t want to talk to me after they’ve seen that, then is my book good enough. 



[00:23:07] Having no responses or negative responses on these can help you try to figure that out. But, on a bigger scarier level, right now, publishing is reeling from COVID-19. They are selling, they’re having a hard time selling books to editors because editors at big traditional publishers are having hard times knowing whether they will continue to exist. I have heard a couple of different things. I know that McMillan itself is shrinking. They laid off a bunch of editors. I have also heard through the rumor mill that Harper Collins is gangbusters that they’re doing really well. So because of COVID, because more people are reading and because they also own Harlequin, which Harlequin suddenly is an incredible business model. Shipping out books on a subscription service who knew that that would come back. Right. But it’s back. So Harper Collins is doing well. 



[00:24:10] But buying books right now and selling books is hard for agents to do. So, again, there is nothing, this is a very long winded way Thoumas, of answering this, that if you would like to look for an agent and then self-publish, if that falls through, I think that that’s a valuable route to go. Other people, I have heard them scream and rail against this and say, no, if you can’t get an agent, then your book is obviously not good enough. And you shouldn’t fail a bad book over into being self-published. I just don’t think that’s true. I think that a hundred agents could look at this book, fail to see its worth. And it could do really well being self-published because it is super niche perhaps, or because it is language that the agents didn’t respond to, but your readers well and if you want to be both, then why not give that book a chance to be traditionally published? And if it fails, and you either rethink it and edit it, change it and try to get an agent after you do that, or you, or you self-publish it, or you do both. That is not a simple answer. That is not a yes or no answer. But I think moving a book that failed to get an agent over into self-publishing is something that can be very good to do. And you’re going to be learning from that whole process and the whole time that you are querying, you’re writing your next book anyway, that book is done. You’re not thinking about it right now and you’re- hello, kitty. And you’re writing your next book. So there’s really, you’re not losing in this. That is what I would recommend to do. If that sounds good to you Thoumas, you should let me know and, and tell me if that resonates with you.



[00:25:56] Everybody else, I appreciate- I appreciate you being with me here today. I hope that you are hanging on and that you are wailing along with your kitties like I do. I know it’s very sad, and that you are getting your work done, and I hope that you come tell me about it and send me an email, send me a Twitter. Let me know how you are doing in these difficult times and tell me what you are struggling with right now. You can also tell me that I’m full of shit and I shouldn’t have- sorry kitty, I shouldn’t have recorded this podcast, but I won’t care because I was speaking my truth to help inspire people like me, who are trying to be brave as well. And that is exactly what I was trying to prove in that middle point of this podcast. So, yes. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of my community. It means the world to me. 

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

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

The post Ep. 185: Should I Look for an Agent for my Debut or Self-Publish It? (Bonus! How To Be an Anti-Racist) appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 184: Should You Build a Mailing List While Still Writing Your First Book?

Should you build a mailing list or reader following while you’re still working on your first book? How do you find a community of writers? (Hint, join my Slack channel, link below!) And how should you write transitions between scenes? All this and more, in this episode with Rachael Herron!

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.

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #184 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled that you’re here with me on this mini episode, if you are one of those people who hears numbers and remembers them, just please know, I have been dreadfully confused, verbally about what number episode I’m on. I think I’ve been telling you I’ve been on 186, 187. I’m actually on 184, the numbers are right in your Podcatcher. If you hear me in the past, say something you’re like, where did I miss three episodes, 4 episodes, maybe 10 episodes, I don’t know. I was just getting it wrong so you can disregard that. 



[00:00:52] Welcome. Welcome. I’ve got some questions to answer. These are from the $5 patrons and thank you, patrons as always for supporting me in this mini coaching way. I really like to collect them and go through them. I’m going to try to get through 3 today. You can always check out that patron level at patreon.com/rachael. I think I say that in the opening of the mini episodes, but yeah, no, there it is again. Very quick catch up for you on what’s going on around here. I am, I think I mentioned this last week under the gun again for revision. This is my editor’s revision due a week from today. And my friends, I may not make this deadline. I don’t know, I’m going to work my hardest. I have just been such a fractured writer person. I’m using all of my tools. I have a very big toolbox of things to use when I’m having a hard time focusing. That’s why I do this podcast is to give you better tools for your toolbox. And I am constantly having to remind myself. So if you’re struggling with this too, you’re not alone. I’m constantly reminding myself what those tools are, where to find them, how to use them, how to remember to use them. After I post this podcast, I’m going to remember to move my computer. It’s literally a shift of 45 degrees instead of facing this way. I’m going to face that way out the window. That is my writing revision spot that I’ve set up during quarantine. Usually my writing revision spot is not in my house, but that is this tiny little space that I managed to clear out of my office to do the actual writing and revising. This particular revision is taking some extra first d- quite a bit of first drafting. Which is then followed by revision of that first draft and then another revision so that it kind of smooths to match the rest of the book in any case I’ve been forgetting to use that space and I’ve- yesterday, all day I struggled because I was sitting in my work spot. This is where I do my busy work. This is where I do my email and my podcasts and my marketing. What little I do. I forgot to go to my writing space and all day I had this girl brain. So I just forgot that tool. 



[00:03:21] Speaking of tools, I would like to, before we get into questions, tell you about something really special that’s being offered by my friend, and cohost of the podcast, the Writer’s Well, J. Thorn, he is offering something really cool. He is kind of the master of the scene as a tool using each scene and making it as strong as it can be. I have actually signed up for this free course. It’s completely free. It’s a 5-day writing challenge called Supercharge Your Scene, and I can’t recommend anybody more to teach this. So it’s at superchargeyourscene.com You just sign up, it’s free, then you are in it. You’re going to do prep work. Talk about why you must write a scene, how to frame it, how to ignite the motivations of your protagonist and your antagonist. How to guarantee that your scene or article explodes on the page. That’s what I need cause my people talk a lot. How to create a difficult, complicated decision for your protagonist, that readers can’t possibly ignore, and don’t forget when I say protagonist, I also mean you, you are the protagonist if you’re writing your memoir. None of this doesn’t apply to you. You must supercharge each scene, whether it’s fiction or memoir. And decide how, or no you learn how to utilize the protagonist consequence when you start the next scene. I have no idea what that means. J. is smarter than I am about scenes, so go to superchargeyourscene.com. Sign up for that. It is running June 15th through 19th, 2020, depending on when you’re listening to this, I hope you get a chance to sign up. I’m going to be in there. Totally free. And also I was supposed to announce that each time I’ve been co-hosting over at the Writer’s Well with new people, J’s been off for three weeks and I keep forgetting. So I wanted to make sure I, I told people about that here. 



[00:05:19] Okay. Let’s get into some cool questions. This is from Leftie. Leftie, I’ve been hanging on to this one for a while so I apologize for the delay. Leftie says, I thought I heard you say in your mini episode about draft passes, and that was brilliant by the way, it’s such a great technique. Thank you. That you were low on questions for your mini episodes and I happen to have one, of course you sent one and then it sat there because I had others. I, she goes on to say, I’ve finished the first draft of the horror novel about a mother and her baby that I told you about. Yes. So happy. Congratulations for you Leftie. It’s the first novel I ever planned before writing the first draft and it made such a difference. I have a much stronger draft and now I’m revising and now I share your love of revisions. Yay! My question is this, “How do you handle transitions in your novels?” By transition, I mean, a paragraph or two that tells the reader that time has passed and what the characters did during this period of time, without it being a fully formed scene, how do you keep them interesting? How do you know when you’ve got too much of them or when you should add one? I feel like minor weak at the moment, and I don’t know what to do about it. Thank you so much. 



[00:06:28] Leftie, this is such a good question and I want to point out that this is something I do very badly in a first draft. I do not worry about it at all. A lot of times I’ll put in just a note to myself in my first draft. This is seven days later. This is three days later. This is a month later or a little bit worse, but this is actually what I do more is I don’t put anything in, I forget to do anything. And timeline is one of my big things that I’m thinking about in my big, make sense draft. I actually, if you’re watching on the video, I usually print out a 3-month blank grid, a blank calendar, and it’s the same calendar that I use to block out my writing time. It’s this, but this one is unique for this book and I put the things that happen on this calendar, is a physical timeline, I do it in pencil during that revision so I can erase things and move them around. When I’m in revision is when I’m deciding how much time has passed between things. Your question is specifically, how do you make that transition from a scene, to a scene where time has passed in between. And the answer is, do it as simply and as quickly as possible. It’s one of those invisible things that the reader’s brain needs, but isn’t interested in. So in order to do it in a non, you can do it in a boring way. You can say nine days later, comma, she, open the door to the grocery store. That’s pretty boring, but it gets the job done and is basically invisible to the reader. It’s like he said, she said they convey information that the back of their reader’s mind picks up on and stores but isn’t going to slow them down. A little bit more interesting of a way to do it, I can hear my cats fighting in the background, is to give it a sentence or two something like three grocery deliveries. Let’s see. Three grocery deliveries, 47 emails and 117 for getting to shut the cabinet drawers, Lacy walked back into the grocery store. You know what I mean? So it’s a, it’s giving a capsule snapshot of what has happened before this next scene. The thing to avoid is really boring ness. Like on Tuesday, Lacy stayed in bed. On Wednesday, Lacy answered the phone seven times and managed to work for two hours. On Thursday, wherever we are in the week. You don’t need to fill the reader in on everything that has happened between the time, what you do need to mention or gloss over is anything that applies to their, your plot or that is kind of a better more lyrical way to get there. It doesn’t have to be very lyrical. Like I said, again, it’s just got to convey the impression that time has passed and readers don’t really care how you do it. So my really short answer, is do them as quick as you can, and as simply as you can. It’s- I can never find this quote, but if anybody wants to look it up for me I’ve been looking for it. Somebody famous said something like, sometimes you just have to get your character to open the door. Open parentheses, he opened the door, close the parentheses there, the door is open. Sometimes you just have to say, you have to tell something and you just do it. Flatly it’s done. You can move on to the interesting part of the book. 



[00:10:17] So, Mae Merrill says recently RWA is going through let’s hope it’s a temporary cluster-fuck. And until they figure out their shit is not an organization, I want to be part of. Same, that being said, I want to find a place where I do belong and can be part of a community of writers. This is especially difficult since I’m living in Korea for the next few years, and I am not on a base or anything like that. Are there places that offer that sense of community and maybe resources that can help writers preferably of all genres and levels? I do not know, Mae. This is such a difficult question. RWA was such a good thing, but it had this underlying systemic racism that is the – or the underpinnings of American society. It was just baked into its very DNA. So untangling that is going to be a big job. And I am not going to be part of that as I have made clear on the show. Don’t hold much hope for RWA, really changing, although I have heard that they’re doing some things that might could help. I don’t know. I’m just keeping an eye on that. In terms of an organization that kind of includes everybody, there isn’t one and I am not meaning to you’ve actually, you’re, you’re helping me to do this. I am not doing this to toot my own personal horn or whatever phrase you want to use for that, but I do have a free slack community. There are about 400 of us in there. It goes from absolutely no participation, like no one’s interacting in there to really, really busy. It is user driven. I am trying to be more active in there. I just put a sprint channel into our community. So, as soon as I did, somebody said, I’m going in in 10 minutes, who wants to join me? So I’m going in at 10:00 AM Pacific standard time this morning, which isn’t about an hour and seven minutes. And I posted that in there. So you can see where, when I am working and you can work alongside me. If you want, you can work alongside other people. In one of my classes, the other day, there was a sprint discussion that had 184 comments on just this one sprint. As people came in, did their work said, okay, I’m going back, I’m going to do some more. I got an 800 words and they would just type back to each other back and forth. It was so freaking inspiring. So we’re going to do that over in my Slack channel in order to find my Slack channel, please come to howdoyouwrite.net Look at the show notes for this episode. The link is always in the show notes for my podcast. I try to keep it the most recently that hasn’t expired and it seems to be working, this link doesn’t expire. It’s totally free. It’s always going to be free. It’s a place to come and talk about writing. Talk about your difficulties, there’s a whining section, there’s a celebration section. I would love, love, love to have you there if you’re not in it already. And I know that you are probably, isn’t that creepy? When my dogs walk in my room and my door creeks like that, I was genuinely a little bit scared. 



[00:13:40] May I know that you were listening, you were hoping that I would tell you about some awesome resource that is out there that doesn’t really exist. As far as I know again, if somebody is listening to this and they’re like, Oh, I know what that community is. It’s all genres, all levels, everyone is welcome. Please come put that in the comments at howdoyouwrite.net because I would really love to know if there is something. But in the meantime, if you want to join my Slack community of writers, please do. It’s an awesome, awesome place. 



[00:14:08] Okay. And the last question is from Thoumas. Hello, Thoumas he says, how early should I start building my reader base mailing list, et cetera. I’m in the early stages of revising my first book and I have no online presence as a writer since my life is so hectic, I can only write about an hour a day and I’m not keen on diverting my writing time to trying to build a following while I’m still working on the manuscript. But do you think it would be worth it at this point? Even if it will dramatically slow down finishing the book? I’m so excited to answer this one because the answer is no. Do not try to build up a fan base mailing list, anything of the sort while you’re writing, revising, polishing, getting editor revisions, anything else on a first book. The exception to this is if you want to be traditionally published, and you want to get an agent, and you want to impress them and the editor, she will sell it to you, then definitely get an online presence and get a hundred thousand followers that will impress an agent or an editor. Anything under a hundred thousand followers, they don’t care about. I have been on social media forever, and I have a good following. I probably have, I don’t even know how many I have I think maybe 6,000 on Facebook over both professional and personal pages. I’m looking at Twitter, which is probably my preferred online presence. I have 4,800 people let me glance at Instagram and I will tell you basically what I’m proving to you is that I have been working on this for a long time, trying to build up a following. I have less than 3000 followers on Instagram. There’s no way you’re going to get to a hundred thousand followers unless you’re like some kind of like internet, YouTube superstar kind of thing. So for us mere mortals, they don’t care, knowing that you have 25 people on your mailing list or even 2,500 does not matter to an agent or an editor. So, there’s no reason to do it besides the whole point is, and I think this is what a lot of people get frustrated about, is that how are you supposed to get somebody on your mailing list as a writer, if they can’t read anything by you and they don’t know, they want to read anything by you. So what’s important is when that first book goes out, whether it is self-published or traditionally published, you make sure that you have a way to capture those fans in any way that they come to you. You want, the ideal way, is the number one way, like ignore everything else. The number one way is to get their email somehow that might require, you know, writing a short story that’s a lead in a prequel to your book that they can opt in when they read or offering them a short story when they read your first book and say, here’s a short story that follows the character in the next few months of their lives. Opt in for that, opt into my mailing list to receive that for free. If it’s a memoir, you can offer to tell them another story that didn’t fit in the book that they might want to know about this, either funny or dramatic or poignant. Get them on your mailing list that way. The reason a mailing list is the most important thing you can have, is that they are your subscribers. You can move them around from different platforms that you keep them on. A lot of people start with MailChimp because it’s a good place to start. It’s free up to X number of, I think a couple thousand subscribers you can move them if you don’t like MailChimp, you can go somewhere else. You own that list. You don’t own anything else, you don’t own Instagram, you don’t own Twitter, you don’t own Facebook, and those can change at any point, you cannot rely on followers on those kinds of places. The thing about a mailing list is you never, ever, no matter who you are, and no matter how much you love someone, you never subscribe a family member or a friend, even a close writing friend to your email list without having them opt in. That’s the way to keep your mailing list clean when you get it don’t put your 25 best friends on it. Ask them to opt in and always allow them by using a service to have an unsubscribed button, unsubscribe button. Unsubscribes happen, they are good. They’re self-selecting themselves out of your range because they’re not your reader anymore. If they unsubscribed. Fantastic. We’d love that, but it is not anything you need to worry about now until the first book is. If not out there, it is going out there and you put the link in, or the URL if it’s a print book where they can type in and find you get on your mailing list, that’s the most important thing. So yes, don’t worry your head about it at all until later there’s no reason to.



[00:18:48] Let’s see a follow up question. When a writer is looking for an agent, how much- I guess I should’ve have read the questions again before I started talking about them. When a writer is looking for an agent, how much weight did the agents put on writers’ existing reader base and literary presence? Zero. If you have a blog though, I will say this, they will find it and they will read it. And they will use it to judge whether they want to work with you. So if you’ve had a blog in the old days or a live journal that pops up when you Google your name, definitely go over and read it and make sure that it is the presence you want to be presenting to an agent. Agents Google, they need to do a social media search or the people that they’re going to work with. They don’t want to find out that you are flaming people online. They’re not going to work with you. My agent picked me up because she liked my book, but she loved my voice on my blog. She loved that person that she saw on the blog. That was actually she’s told me that that was more valuable to her than my book it’s by itself.  So the fact that I had a, you know, a 12-year old blog at that point, it was something. Don’t start a blog if you’re looking for an agent or representation that’s, that’s not useful. They don’t care. They really don’t care. You are a newbie, you’re a debut author, and that brings with it its own awesomeness. Publishers really love debut authors. There’s a reason that they presented Stolen Things, my first novel under RH Herron as a debut author. I was talking about it on the draft to digital spotlight the other day, but that really bothers me. I feel like it is mine, but it is legally allowable and it is what publishers want. Target wants to have debut authors in their store, things that are new and shiny, appeal to customers. 



[00:20:37] So yeah, you’re, it’s just a, it’s just a bonus that you’re a debut and that you don’t have any of this thing behind you. Let’s see number three, I am a Finnish immigrant and I have been considering coming up with an author name that is easier for readers since my main target audience will be Americans. It’s a toss-up though, because foreign names do have a certain flair in at least some people’s minds. My American wife always says my first name to almost sounds weird to Americans. Thoumas you know, I’ve never thought that, so the author name could be as simple as just changing my first name to Thomas and keeping my last name. Your last name, which I know and you haven’t said it here, so I won’t say it, is easy to pronounce and easy to spell phonetically. The other thing is your last name is unique. It is not, you’re not Thomas Brown, you’re not Thomas Smith or Jones. So I kind of, while I disagree with your wife, Thoumas is almost said, like it’s spelled and it is spelled phonetically, anybody could spell that. It is not a bad idea to think about using Thomas and your last name, because the combination of two unique names is sometimes problematic. So it’s, I would say it’s not a bad idea to consider Thomas plus your last name, that said, if you love your name and want to keep it, do it, it is author’s choice. You get to do that. Yours is not like a check name with 17 consonants and a bunch of phonetic combinations that we don’t normally see, it is not difficult. So you get to, you get to make that decision. 



[00:22:18] Yeah. So that is the total of the questions. I’ve got another one here but actually I might be answering that in a different way in an episode upcoming. So to my $5 patrons to whom I am your mini coach, I’m ready for some more questions, please. You can send them to me in email or through Patreon or on Twitter or wherever you can find me. So I’ve got to get back to this revision now. I hope that you all are hanging in there through the pandemic and that you’re healthy, that you’re safe and that hopefully you are writing. Oh, and you should come join my Slack. If you haven’t already, I would love to see you there let’s form a community, a real community. It’s already there. So come join it. All right my friends, happy writing. 

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

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

The post Ep. 184: Should You Build a Mailing List While Still Writing Your First Book? appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 182: How to Allow Yourself to Suck and Fix it Later

Ep. 182 Miniepisode: How to Allow Yourself to Suck and Fix it Later

It says 186, but it is actually 182!

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #182 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. 

[00:00:21] Couldn’t be more pleased that you’re here with me today. Today’s a mini bonus episode smack dab in the middle of quarantine and Corona virus, here in California, we are not going to have our state home orders lifted until at least the end of May. I know that LA I’ve heard, just went to the end of June and I have to tell you I’m doing really well. I was made for this kind of life, I really was, and I don’t mind enjoying parts of it. The whole thing is so awful and tragic, that where we find happiness, I believe we deserve to find happiness. So I enjoy being here at my desk and I enjoy talking to you. And today I’m going to go through a couple of questions that I’ve had stored up. I won’t get to all of them, but I’ll try to do them soon. If you are a patron level of $5 or up, you should use me to ask questions. That’s what I’m here for, I’m your mini coach for this. 



[00:01:23] Mariah, however, just sent me an email. This is not really a question. She had a comment. After I did a mini episode, pretty recently about revisions and skeleton scenes. And it tickled me so much that I asked for her permission to share it with you here today. Mariah is the person who, four years, ago when I went full time writing more than four years now, she encouraged me to coach writers and she volunteered herself to be my first. A Guinea pig and victim. I was already teaching and I knew that I loved to teaching, but I hadn’t really bolstered myself esteem up yet to coach and Mariah is the person who really broke that up for me. And now it is one of the things that I absolutely truly honestly live for. So I think I owe this debt of gratitude to Mariah forever. And then she does wonderful things, like send this amazing email. So listen to this in case it helps any of you, in case you’ve been feeling the same way or there’s something in here that might help, she says, hello.



[00:02:29] Hello. Thank you so much for that super helpful mini episode about revisions and skeleton scenes. My reaction to all of it remains, wait- I’m allowed to do that? Which is ridiculous and so telling. Intellectually, I know books don’t spring, fully formed from the writer’s mind. We’ve talked about it so many times, every writer I read who talks about their process says this. There’s tons of literature and podcasts and whatever about it. And still my mind insists that I’m only a good writer if I sit down, start typing and the whole thing comes out pretty much perfect and sensible and lyrical in one go. With all the themes and the layers in the right places. Maybe you’ll make a small continuity mistake about someone’s eye color or their dog’s name or something, but doing an actual pass for something like add others’ visceral’s, as part of your bona fide writer’s process? No, I heard that bit about add others visceral’s, which as an aside is one of my passes. I just look at all my characters and I make sure that they are moving their bodies in a visceral way that telegraphs to the reader, what the other non-main characters are feeling. So that’s like a little mini pass for me and it takes an hour to do for the whole book. So going back to Mariah’s letter, I heard that bit about add others visceral’s when I was cycling home from the office. And I think I laughed out loud on the psychopath. It was just so outrageous and liberating and right. Yes! So I think this message is maybe finally sinking in for me. More skeletoning and making notes of passes I need to do someday, less agonizing over why I’m stuck or why things are meh or not clear to me yet. So liberating. Also, I expect I’ll have to hear it again many times, but that is the way of the world for now. I’m humming along nicely. I did seven and a half hours of work last week, mostly planning, some researching, keeping it skeletony and moving along and it feels like real progress. So yay! 



[00:04:35] Oh my gosh, Mariah. Yay. Yay. Yay. Yes, yes, yes. I have to keep realizing this. I know that I will always feel exactly like you, that I am not a real writer because when I sit down, my words don’t flow easily. They don’t come out well, they don’t come out in the way that I want them to. I forget what I’m doing in the middle of a sentence, this whole draft is a pile of crap. And the fact that I feel that way, is something that prevents me from feeling like a real writer on many, many days. And so I remind myself of this and if you’re listening, thinking what is skeletoning? That is something I just call when I, I use that word when instead of writing the whole scene, I skeleton it out. I just put the barest bones, literally bones of what is, you know, literally meaning figuratively, the bones of what are going to happen. What is going to happen in this scene? They’re going to go to this place. They’re going to say something like this, their emotions are going to feel this way. And this part of the plot will be revealed. Great. There’s a scene. If I can’t write it right now, I have the skeleton to revise later. Oftentimes, I would say most of the time, I don’t skeleton something. I go into the scene and I bash it out as badly as I can. And I try to be lyrical and I try to write good sentences and they fall flat. They fall on the floor and they ride around like snakes trying to shed their skin, which is what they need to do. And then I go back to them later in revision, but sometimes I just can’t write a scene. It’s just too hard. So I will skeleton my way to the end and I’ll jump into the next scene as if I haven’t written that bad one. And this is something that people that I teach nowadays say over and over is when I finally let them see some bad writing of my own, some first draft writing of my own. The common thing that they all say is, “Oh my gosh, you weren’t kidding. That is really, really bad.” And I say to that, yes, it’s really, really bad. That’s how writers work. We write bad things and then we fix them later. So Mariah, thank you for this. This was an absolute delight to get. 



[00:06:58] Okay, so Maggie, Maggie M. Hi, Maggie! She has a couple of questions. What is your process for deciding which point of view is the best fit for a novel? For me, it’s less of a process and more of a feeling. I normally really start to think about the characters before. I usually get a premise, a slight premise. And then I start thinking about the characters, the ones who are biggest and brightest in my mind normally get a point of view. I have never, and probably will never write more than three points of view. Three is my absolute limit, because in revision, when I’m trying to make all the voices sound different, that’s about as much as I can handle. In the first drafts, I don’t worry about keeping their voices sounding different because it’s the first crappy draft. But I do always think about, who matters, who will matter most to the reader of this book? That’s my main character. And when it comes to deciding which character gets to have the point of view for a scene, there’s an old tried and true rule with air quotes around it, that the person who has the most to lose should be the person with a point of view in this particular scene. That’s a nice rule. It’s also really good to break, it’s really awesome to watch, to have, to have one of your characters, watch another character, lose the thing that they needed. So they, the other character, excuse me, Alexa, stop. Oh, I probably just stopped your ALA EXA. Sorry, that was a timer. Yeah, so it’s also sometimes nice to watch the character who doesn’t have as much to lose in the scene, to have that person watch the character who does. So that is something that you can play with a little, a little bit. But I hope that helps. 



[00:08:50] And her second question is, “If one of the characters you created could become a living person, who would you pick?” That is such a great hard question and right now, I have to say it would probably be the one that I am writing. Her name is Jillian. She is an OB GYN. She is pregnant and she’s honestly the first person I have ever written a book about in first person. So she’s feeling pretty alive and dynamic to me and I’m in a fourth draft, so I’m really inside her head and I like her. She’s pretty strong and kick ass. So I would love to have her come to life as a living person. But the other person that I always say is Nolan from Pack Up the Moon. He was the father. And I absolutely love Nolan. I feel a very deep kinship with him. I think I’m, I think Nolan might be me in a man’s body. Cause we do accidentally write ourselves into our books. We really do. We try not to, but it happens all the time. And Nolan, of course, as characters do, took on his own character and his own self. And he’s really, he really turned into this beautiful, caring, human being who is broken in a very particular way. And I love him and I miss him. So I would love to have dinner with him and give him a really big hug. 



[00:10:19] So thank you for these questions. Thank you, Mariah, for your email. Lefty and Thomas, I’ve got your questions queued up for next time. So that’ll be the next mini episode. I’m not forgetting about you. And I want to wish everybody very, very, very happy writing. I hope you are able to get some writing done during this crazy time. If you’re not, give yourself some forgiveness and try again tomorrow. But if writing is the most important thing to you and you feel like you should be doing it, then by God, get to the page and write some utter direct, put some crap on the page. Don’t worry about it, lower your standards. And then where your standards land, dig a basement for them and let them land on the basement floor. Lower those standards. You can do it and keep me posted on how you’re doing. Happy writing and we’ll talk soon my friends. 

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. 182: How to Allow Yourself to Suck and Fix it Later appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 181: Jeni McFarland on Writing by Hand

Jeni McFarland holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston, where she was a fiction editor at Gulf Coast Magazine. She’s an alum of Tin House, a 2016 Kimbilio Fellow, and has had short fiction published in Crack the Spine, Forge, and Spry, which nominated her for the storySouth Million Writers Award. She was also a finalist for the 2015 Gertrude Stein Writers Award in Fiction from the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has lived in Michigan and the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two cats. The House of Deep Water is her first book. 

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. 

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 #181 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I am thrilled that you’re here with me today as I talked to Jeni McFarland, whose book just came out. It is called The House of Deep Water. I have just started it. It is beautiful and engrossing and engaging and kind of everything that I want to read right now. So I’m very excited that you will get to hear her talking about that process, talking about how she writes by hand, especially in these difficult times for concentration. So I know you will enjoy the interview. 



[00:00:56] In a very quick personal update; Everything is going great around here, which feels honestly very strange to say. I am doing just fine under the stay at home order. We are- it’s May 8th as I record this, in California here, we’re under stay at home orders until at least the 31st and I don’t mind. I really don’t mind. I miss a few things. I miss hugging my sisters and my best friends. I miss my recovery meetings and all that hugs that I get there. I miss swimming and I think that’s it. Otherwise it’s freaking fabulous. I love that everything has been canceled. I don’t have to travel even New Zealand got canceled, which wasn’t coming until August, but, I don’t mind. I, you know, New Zealand will be next year. They want me back next year. So that’ll be great. There’s this level of giddy relief at not having to go out and do things and driving exponentially less. I have started to listen to podcasts in the garden, so I’m actually catching up on podcasts, which was great cause I wasn’t listening to podcasts at all while I wasn’t driving for a while. Speaking of the garden I have been in there, we have a big backyard and it has well, I mean big by Oakland urban concepts, but, it goes down kind of gradual slope and then a steep slope down to the creek. This, this urban creek that’s behind her house and it’s actually, you have to go through two gates to get to it. So it’s kind of the secret creek that we never get to see. The secret bottom part of our yard is covered in ivy in very deep and dense and we never get down in there. I don’t even know if we can open the gate right now. That’ll be a project for another day. But the yard has been full, literally, no exaggeration of weeds up to shoulder height. And every year I get to this point and every year, every year for memory, I lose my mind, call somebody on Craigslist, have somebody come get rid of everything. And then we’ve got a, you know, semi decent yard to plant things in for the rest of the, you know, spring, summer and fall. This year I didn’t, I I’m trying to save money. All of that. And I’ve got, I don’t really have more time, but this week, this week I’ve had more time. Cause my book has been off my plate as it went to my editor. So I’ve spent like the last week out in the garden, most of the weeds are gone. I would say probably 75% of the weeds are gone. It looks great. And I’m building something that I’ve wanted for years and years and years, I’m building a- it’s called a cutting garden. It’s a flower garden that will just be full of riotous flowers in any which way I, I broadcast so the seeds, and it’s called a cutting garden because it’s for cutting it’s for cutting the flowers and filling your house with flowers that you grew.

I don’t know if it’s going to work, but I am getting a cubic yard of soil and compost dumped in my driveway at any moment, which then I will have to wheelbarrow back to the place that I kind of built. It’s going to be probably, it’s going to be slightly recently, like six inches of deep dirt above our ground. And I’m going to do that, I’m putting in automatic watering system with soaker hoses, and I’m also planting vegetables and all the things I normally do. And then, you know, sometimes fail to follow through with, but I’m really having fun with that and with moving my body and I had forgotten what it feels like to move my body. I’ve been working on this book for months and it hasn’t been great weather until recently, and it’s just been so beautiful to be outside and aching and, you know, pulling muscles. And, I’ve got cuts all over my body from walking around the, we have two cit- we have three citrus trees, all of which have thorns and, and you know, pruning those, oh it’s just been so good and yummy and wonderful. So I’ve been having a great time. It’s also exercise, which boosts my mood, who knew, never heard that before. So that’s been great. 

[00:05:17] I haven’t been doing any writing except I wrote a Patreon essay last week about How to Pack Lightly, which hopefully someday we’ll get to do again. I am borderline obsessed right now with eventually taking a trip with no luggage, just the purse and like extra tee shirt and a couple of pair of Joanie’s and go. Wash your clothes every night, when you go to bed. When I can’t sleep, I start thinking about that. I don’t know. I’m, I’m aware to, who’s obsessed with that. I should get my revision letter for Hush Little Baby on Monday from my editor. So I have the weekend to continue to do no writing. I haven’t kind of messing with some essays, but very lightly. And then on Monday, hopefully I’ll get my revision letter, my brain will explode with the trauma of it and what she says I need to fix, by now it’s been out of my hands for a week and a half, two weeks. And by now I’m convinced there’s nothing of worth in it at all. So if she says she likes anything, bonus, and I can revise anything into anything else, so that’ll be fun. But right now I’m enjoying not having that on my plate. 



[00:06:22] What I do have on my plate is that the 90 Days classes, the new three-month batch of classes started this week. And it’s amazing and wonderful and Tuesdays, which is when the classes are. I am just so happy. And somebody in a couple of people in one of the classes said, I love coming to this because I forget everything else. I forget the world. And I am immersed in talking about writing and Tuesdays feel like that to me, I just have this blast of energy, you know, giving and taking inside these classes. And it’s really beautiful. And I’ve mentioned it before, but my super power is gathering amazing people who lift each other up. I don’t know why it always happens to me, but honestly, I was talking about it with my wife one night at dinner and I was like, gosh, I shouldn’t say this out loud. I’ll get a terrible student who just wants to bring the rest of the class down and be insulting and demeaning. And then I thought, wow, no, this is not for Stanford. This is not for Berkeley. This is for me. This is what I teach. I would cheerfully refund that person to get them out of my class. Boom gone. I don’t have to worry about that, cause that never happens. And again, with this group of people, it is amazing, but it’s just been a very positive, very exciting week of real balance, I guess. Cause I haven’t been writing that much. Oh boy. We’ll get back into writing next week. 



[00:07:49] So in any case, I hope that you are finding some joy, finding some way to move your body, finding some way to love your writing. And I hope that you come tell me about it. And right now let’s get into the interview with Jeni McFarland. I know you’re going to enjoy it and we will talk soon my friends. 



[00:08:08] 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: [00:08:30] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Jeni McFarland. Hi Jeni!

Jeni McFarland: [00:08:30] Hi, it’s great to be here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:32] I’m so happy to have you. Your first book when this airs next week, we’ll be out in the world. I know. So excited to talk to you about this. Okay. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction. First, Jeni McFarland holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston, where she was a fiction editor at Gulf Coast Magazine. She’s an alum of Tin House, a 2016 Kimbilio Fellow, and she has had short fiction published in Crack the Spine, Forge and Spry, which nominated her for the story South Million Writers Award. She was also a finalist for the 2015 Gertrude Stein Writers Award in Fiction from the Doctor T. J.  Eckleburg Review. She has lived in Michigan and the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and two cats. The House of Deep Water, which will be out by the time y’all hear this is her first book and it just looks gorgeous. It’s already in my preorder. I, were trying to get me a copy before we chatted, but because of COVID, couldn’t quite get me one. So yeah. You know, things just aren’t being mailed as much, but- So where are you living now? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:09:42] I moved back to Michigan in October. So and then we bought a house in January just in time to go into lockdown. We were in a tiny apartment before with like boxes, stacked everywhere. So I’m so glad we’re like spread out.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:59] That’s wonderful. And your book is set in Michigan, too. Isn’t it? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:10:03] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:04] Yes. I lived in Oakland so I don’t know where you were in the Bay area, but that’s where I’ve been for a lot of years. So-

Jeni McFarland: [00:10:10] Oh okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:11] Yeah. So let’s talk to you about writing. Congratulations, first of all on-

Jeni McFarland: [00:10:17] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:18] -this year first book, how are you, how are you feeling honestly? I’d love to hear that from new writers, new- new books out in the world writers.

Jeni McFarland: [00:10:26] So honestly like today, I’m feeling great and I’m excited, but I’ve been terribly depressed lately and so I haven’t really like, people are like, are you excited? And I’m like, yeah, but I haven’t really been feeling it. Especially since my book tour was canceled. But yeah, no, I’m feeling good today. I’m excited. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:47] Good. It’s a very, very strange time to be doing anything in the world, including launching a book. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:10:52] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:10:53] But some of my friends yesterday, we were on you know, typical zoom writer meeting chatting about the state of the world. And we were all like, this is probably a good time for debut authors. There are people who are really looking for amusement and entertainment and books right now. I know I am so.

Jeni McFarland: [00:11:10] Yeah, that’s true. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:11] Everything crossed. Well, let’s talk about your writing process since this is a show about that. Can you tell us about your process though? The when and the where and the how, and I’m taking, keeping in consideration. Of course, you’ve just moved into a brand new house, et cetera. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:11:29] Yeah. So I’m still kind of getting my office in line it’s I don’t know. I feel like I need to be surrounded by color and like pretty things when I’m writing and I haven’t had a chance to paint in here or hang drapes or anything like that yet. So it’s like, I, I usually paint in my living room. I’m sorry, not paint. I usually write in my living room these days but hopefully I will, I will get my space in order one of these days. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:01] Well, it looks pretty with the lamp and the books behind you. So what is that I hear in the background? Is it a bird outside or a tiny kitten?

Jeni McFarland: [00:12:09] Oh yeah. I have, I think it’s a Blue Jay that they’re kind of loud. Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:12:13] I love it. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:12:14] Currently that’s outside. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:16] I’m going to put a bird feeder up inside of my, in front of my office. I pretty soon I think I want to just be able to watch them. So are you a morning writer afternoon, evening? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:12:23] Afternoon or evening. Oftentimes like lately it’s been at like 11 o’clock midnight. I am not a morning person. I try to sleep through as much of the morning as possible. So yeah, and then when I do get off, I don’t get a lot done before noon.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:42] That is, that is less of a common answer and I always like hearing it. So do you write into the wee hours when nobody else is awake or? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:12:49] Yes. Yeah. Sometimes when I’m, when I’m having a good writing day, I will write from like 11 until 2 and then kind of wandered to bed. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:58] That sounds so fun.

Jeni McFarland: [00:13:00] I, yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:13:03] I like go to bed at 9, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s such a different thing. And I just think that people who write into the wee small hours are so romantic somehow, like the other day, two days ago, I got up at 3 and I just couldn’t sleep. And then I started writing and one of my best girlfriends that I crossed paths cause she, she usually stays up till 2 or 3 to write. So we kind of saw each other on Twitter as we were seeing shifts in the night. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:13:26] I will say when I was in high school, I used to write in secret, you know, in the middle of the night, cause I was a horrible insomniac and I didn’t want my mom to know. And so I would write by candlelight in the middle of the night, talking about romantic. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:40] See that is the most romantic vision and it, and I actually remember being a kid and I want to say, some famous heroin in a book, maybe it was Harry at the spy or something would right underneath the covers with a flashlight. And I would take like notebooks underneath the covers with a flashlight. And then I would just feel as stupid as I do some days, like right now, when I write it like this, this is terrible. And then I would go to sleep. But yeah, I love that vision. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:14:08] I’m making myself sit still for, you know, a good chunk of time or making myself stay focused. I haven’t had a lot of focus these days. But yeah. I started in writing this book, I started writing by hand just because otherwise I would, I would, you know, pause, you know, and think for a while and then wander away to Twitter or whatever, if I’m on my computer. But yeah, writing by hand is a little, it’s a little bit easier to stay focused, a little better. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:38] What is it like when you, because I’ve never written anything long- long hand, what is it like when you bring it in? Do you end up doing revisions on the way into the computer or? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:14:50] Yeah, oftentimes I do I’m so I don’t know. I give myself permission to just write whatever and it can be as crummy or worded as poorly as I want when I’m writing by hand and then I’ll fix it, you know, the first time that I type it up or add, or yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:05] Was most of the book written that way? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:15:07] I would say… so I- when I started doing that, I had like a, you know, not a full draft, but fairly full first draft. So like the second draft, and subsequent drafts were written that way. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:23] Wow. So you actually leave the document and go out of it to write another, write the next draft. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:15:29] Yes. Yes, cause I don’t know, like I find that I’m kind of anxious that like, what if I edit something that I want later? So if I just use like a totally new draft, then I, I, I never go back to the old ones, but I just feel more comfortable because they’re there. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:46] I absolutely agree with that. I actually went back into a draft yesterday to pull out one paragraph, which I think I’ve never done before. But I did have it safely saved as like yesterday’s word document or something. Yeah. Are you a plotter or a pantser when it comes to writing? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:16:00] I’m more of a pantser. I- I’m trying, starting my second novel right now. And I’m trying to find, like I started with an outline and an idea of like where the plot was going to go and it’s not working for me. I think, I dunno, I think I- I’m way more interested in the characters than the plot and like the plot just kind of comments from the characters and like what they would do in a situation so I, I definitely start with character sketches, but not with that plot so much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] I love that. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:16:35] Ooh, I love to take a character who might resemble somebody I know, who I just don’t understand and like, just sit down and spend some time with them and try to figure out, figure them out, like figure out what makes them tick or like why they do the things they do.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:54] How much do they end up changing on the page? And I only ask that because sometimes I’ll bar borrow someone I know, and then I write about them for so long that it turns into a completely different person. And I almost forget that I based them on someone. Do you do that or do they kind of stay true? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:17:10] No, they, they tend to take on their own life, which is good cause I feel like then I’m less likely to have people come back later and be like, why did you write that about me? Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:20] Yeah, yeah. Which is going to happen anyway. And it’s usually about the wrong people. Yeah. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:17:29] Oh, a craft tip. That’s very open. I don’t even know where to start 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:35] Very open-ended, oh, I hope that the publicist would have sent these to you, but, but it is okay. Let’s I can help you drill it down. What help- what is it, what is something you do on a, on a regular basis with maybe character that helps you build them? Since your kind of like a character driven person. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:17:53] Yeah. I dunno, I do like to start out just, I- I’ve tried the thing where you, where you write, like you write down what their birthday is and what their favorite color is and their favorite food. And I don’t find that as helpful as like starting with just describing them physically. And then from there, think about, always think about like what their insecurities would be based on the way they look, because we all have those and then,

Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] Oh what a great idea. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:18:22] The way that they try to kind of navigate the world with those, with, you know, whatever their issues are.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:30] That it sounds so simple. And I have never thought of doing that. Like I know how I navigate through the world with my big belly, like, and I know how I stand in order to try to put that away. And I never thought about, you know, giving characters, that kind of thing that they’re either showing or hiding. That’s awesome. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:18:46] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:18:47] That’s really beautiful. I’m sorry to put you on the spot with a question you didn’t see coming there. I apologize. This might, this might also take you back, but what thing in your life affect your writing in a surprising way? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:19:01] Oh, I would say my husband’s going to hate this answer, but I would say him and his moods. So when he’s in a bad mood, I’m, I’m getting better at like kind of shutting his emotions out. But you know, after 11 years of marriage, but I’m still not great at it. So oftentimes like just other and it’s not just him. It’s, it’s other people in general, like other people’s moods when they’re around me, I tend to take on their feelings a little bit.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:33] I feel I have this theory that writers are severe empaths as a general role. So I think that a lot of us struggle with that. Luckily, luckily, my wife is very, very like mood normalized? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:19:50] Oh nice,

Rachael Herron: [00:19:51] Yeah. It’s, it’s nice. But if she weren’t, I can imagine that that would wreak havoc, especially, especially in the times of COVID-19 when we are all in the houses with our significant others, 

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:00] You know what though, he kinda loves working from home. Like, I think he’s happier without a commute. So he’s been in a fairly good mood lately. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:09] Everyone’s happy without a commute. Aren’t they? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:11] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:20:12] Like it’s the best. Good answer. What is the best book that you read recently? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:19] I recently finished Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage and it was-

Rachael Herron: [00:20:24] It look so good. Is it?

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:26] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:27] What did you love about it?

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:33] So I guess I might be a misanthrope in this way, but I love watching people’s relationships deteriorate. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:43] Yes

Jeni McFarland: [00:20:44] So just seeing like the, so you know, a little teaser for people, the book is about a man who’s a black man who’s wrongfully incarcerated. And just watching his marriage fall apart was heartbreaking, but also just, I couldn’t stop reading it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:02] I run toward those kinds of things and the wifi spoke up. She’s just like, I don’t understand why you’re such a terrible person and I’m like, I’m not, I just love the more uncomfortable and difficult it is, the more I lean in. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:21:17] Yeah. Same here. I feel like if it’s, if it’s a happy book I’m not terribly interested. Like and I taught when I was in grad school and my students were, I told them at the beginning of the semester, I was like, we’re not going to read any happy books, just so you know. And halfway through the semester, they were like, are we ever going to read a happy book? And I was like, were you listening the first day? It’s not going to happen.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:38] But I actually gain- gain happiness by reading those. And by watching difficult television. I, that I gained like

Jeni McFarland: [00:21:45] Yeah, me too. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:46] So I like that. Okay, so now I would like you to tell us about your book with a little bit of what it’s about, where it can be found all of that. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:21:57] Sure. So my book is briefly it’s about a woman, she’s half black, half white, she’s about 40, she moves back to the small Michigan farm village where she grew up amid financial troubles and she gets there and she moves back in with her father. She gets there and she finds that he has a live in girlfriend, who is a girl that she babysat in high school. And this is right as their neighbor has been arrested for just horrific crimes. And she was one of the victims as a child. So it’s a lot about homecoming and reconciling your past and yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] And does it mom come back to, isn’t there? 

Jeni McFarland: [00:22:39] The girlfriend, the living girlfriend’s mom.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:41] The living girlfriend’s mom. Okay. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:22:43] So, and then her mom moves back. Yeah. So it’s these three women coming back to town.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:47] Yeah. Sounds like it is entirely my jam. I cannot wait to read it. It is called The House of Deep Water and that’ll be out by the time you all hear this, it’ll be on all the platforms and all the bookstores. And I would like to encourage people to buy it and go get a curbside pickup from your favorite bookstore. I’m in a point where I’m not buying anything from Amazon right now, nothing for my Kindle, getting the- cause we have to support our independent bookstores right now, as much as possible.

Jeni McFarland: [00:23:13] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:23:14] So people call your independent bookstore. They will love you. They will kiss you from six feet away and leave your package on the curb. So The House of Deep Water. Thank you so much, Jeni. This was fantastic. I wish, I hope all the best for you and that the book just flies from the virtual shelves. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:23:32] That would be amazing. Thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:34] All right. Take care. Thank you so much. 

Jeni McFarland: [00:23:36] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:37] 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. 181: Jeni McFarland on Writing by Hand appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 180: Melanie Abrams on Bringing the Conflict

Melanie Abrams is the author of the novels Playing and Meadowlark. She is an editor and photographer and currently teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, writer Vikram Chandra, and their children.

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. 

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.

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #180 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron.

[00:00:21] Thrilled that you’re here with me today, as I talked to Melanie Abrams on her book that came out today called Meadowlark. She’s a stunning writer and we’re going to be talking about bringing the conflict and you are really going to enjoy her. I know that. My apologies for getting this out a few hours late, better late than never, has some parts I just skipped, but I’m really trying to be a little bit more regular. But this week was thrown off a little bit by a massive migraine that knocked me out for a couple of days. And then yesterday, I don’t know if you could hear that, but my wife is howling of laughter in the kitchen. Don’t know why, what. Maybe she’ll come tell us. 



[00:01:03] So that threw some things off track, like getting my new 90 Day courses started, which is what I needed to do this morning, opening them. 90 Days to Done, 90 Day Revision, are open now and sadly the last two classes have closed. And I just have to say that teaching 90 Day Revision and 90 Days to Done, this last 3 months, for these last 90 days. Oh my God. The whole world changed. In 90 days, everything turned upside down, and I have to tell you, the writers that were working in those classes, moved to meet these new challenges with such beauty and such grace and I could not have been prouder of the work that they did. And they finished whole books. They finished whole revisions, in a time when I think people need to give themselves a big break. You know, like don’t try to, you know, everybody’s saying, don’t try to read your novel right now, they actually did. They actually did and I’m so proud of them. So yeah, that was really exciting. And the new classes start today, and this podcast is going on today, and then maybe I might get a couple of days off. I don’t know. I haven’t managed to do it yet. It isn’t my goal to do so. I’ve got so many goals, so many things I want to do, so many new things I want to write. I just put out a Patreon essay yesterday about how to pack light because I’m finding that as a traveling wanderer, who should be in Barcelona right now, this very minute. I need to keep travel dreams alive as part of mental health for me. I need to be rejiggering my packing list and thinking about not just travel, but who I am when I travel, and seeing how I can bring that person into where I sit at this desk today. So that’s what that essay was about. And that was really fun to write.



[00:03:02] Speaking of Patreon, you got the essay if you are a patron of mine, and I thank you deeply from the bottom of my heart. Thanks to new patron, Dee Deploy. I don’t know if I’m saying that right, but Dee Deploy, thank you. Thank you so much. Everyone else who wants to read those kinds of essays, you could do it for $1 for one month, read all 39 essays and then unsubscribe. You could do it $1 for like 200,000 words worth of work in there. So, um, there’s some good stuff in there. You can always find that over at patreon.com/rachael. And now let’s just jump right into the interview with Melanie and I hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you are getting a little bit of work done. Come find me anywhere where I live online and tell me about it. I really love hearing from you all. Okay. Happy writing!



[00:05:09] Hey, do you want to do more writing on Zoom with a group of people that you like? Well, you should join Rachael Says Write. We write together on Tuesday mornings from 5:00 to 7:00 AM Pacific standard time, 8:00 to 10:00 AM Eastern standard time. This one works for you Europeans, and on Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:00 PM Pacific standard time, 7:00 to 9:00 Eastern standard time, New Zealand and Australia. This one’s for you, and for just $39 a month, you can write with us in Zoom, it’s like 16 hours for a month. It’s like $2 an hour to sit in a Zoom room with really cool people and spy on them while they’re writing and let them spy on you while you’re writing. They’ll get to see your true writers face and there is nothing more intimate than that. Honestly, you guys, it’s such a good time. Go to rachaelherron.com/write  or rachaelherron.com/rachaelsayswrite to find out more about joining.

Rachael Herron: [00:05:04] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Melanie Abrams. Hello, Melanie. How are you? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:05:09] Hello! Enduring. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:11] You’re enduring your sheltered in place. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:05:04] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:05:15] So I am very glad to talk to you. I’ve had a couple people say, are we still on? And I’m like, hell yes we are! And it’s the best time to do it. Let’s talk about something else. So a little bio for you, is Melanie Abrams is the author of the novels Playing and Meadowlark. She is an editor and photographer and currently teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Oakland with her husband, Vikram Chandra and their children. He’s also a writer. But you are the writer I’m talking to today and I couldn’t be more pleased to talk to you. We know each other through NaNo channels. Which are some of the best channels always to know people from, we met through Grant Faulkner, who’s been on this show, and we recently did a NaNoLitMo with you, which is our local reading series. And if anybody’s listening, please check out NaNoLitMo on Facebook and come to our next event, which might be never! You may have, you may have had the last event we’re going to do 

Melanie Abrams: [00:06:11] Just say it isn’t so. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:13] No, it isn’t so, it isn’t so. But it’s very nice to have you in your, to be talking to you in your writing digs, ‘cause you have a, you have a home to write in. Is that right? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:06:23] I do. Right now, I’m writing from an abandoned house. Now I have a friend who actually has two houses and they have sheltered in place at one, and so I’ve escaped to their other to do some writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:35] Truly ideal,

Melanie Abrams: [00:06:37] Absolutely

Rachael Herron: [00:06:37] And everybody right now is a tiny bit jealous. So, that’s always fun. Tell us about your writing process. That’s what this show is really about, is about how you get the work done, and one way is to have a friend with an empty house, which totally get behind, but how do you get it done with all the other things that you’re doing, you know, mothering and teaching and all of that. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:06:57] Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I mean, obviously, how I get the work done now, it looks very differently than how I get the work done on a normal basis. But we’re going to go with quote unquote normal and that is like for me, I usually am super, super lucky and that I teach at UC Berkeley and that’s, you know, classes there are only two days a week. So I try and get all my teaching stuff done in those two days. So that means, you know, meeting with students in office hours, grading, prepping for class, et cetera. And so I keep those two days for teaching. And the other three days I reserve for writing, which is obviously easier said than done with children, and you know, everything else that we have to do. But I really do kind of reserve those mornings usually it’s, you know, it usually ends up being like after drop-off until lunchtime to write. So those three days a week. But I also, in the past, and this has evolved a little bit over the years, but have given myself a word count that I have to meet each day. It started as 500 words, which I talked to my students about this, and they’re always shocked that it’s so little it’s funny because actually my husband also does this, but he writes even less, it’s 400 words a day. So I always talk about how, you know, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:23] Yeah

Melanie Abrams: [00:09:24] And so the best thing to do is to set low, a low bar for yourself. But I think what’s interesting is that I actually, with this last novel was able to raise that to a thousand words a day. And which I had never been able to do before. So I don’t think other than maybe magic, I’m not sure why, you know, that that changed, but a thousand words felt very doable and manageable without feeling, oppressive.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:51] I don’t know if you’ve ever had this, but no matter what my word limit and what my word goal is, ‘cause I also work with word goals, but about the time I’m 300 or 400 words away from it, it seems impossible. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:09:01] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:09:02] Whether that’s 1000 or 3000 or 500 like if it’s 500 at 100 I start to think I can’t do this. You’re never going to get there. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:09:10] I’ve definitely had that too. I think that ti- having a certain amount of time in which you have to do it, like it ends up being that a lot of the words end up being in the last or however long you have left. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:23] Yes. Yes, totally. So you mentioned that’s your, that’s your ideal way to do it, but what I do kind of want to talk about now, I guess like how-

Melanie Abrams: [00:09:32] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:09:33] How has that, how is that changing and are you able to focus on writing?

Melanie Abrams: [00:09:36] Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve started a new novel and it started before the pandemic, so how the writing is going to go on that novel after the pandemic. Well, I’m not sure, but what was, so what was interesting about starting that novel is that I started writing it in a way in which I have never written before. I mean, I am one of those writers super dedicated to just, you know, putting your butt in the chair every, you know, whatever days you determined between this hour and this hour and just doing the work, like absolutely not an inspiration kind of writer, but this latest book has kind of taken me by surprise, in wa- because I feel- I’ve had the urge to write at night, which I have never had in my life. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:21] If I had that happen, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:10:22] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:10:23] I would think I was having a brain tumor. Like, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:10:25] Honestly, I am so with you, it has been so shocking. I’m so glad that you can, you have this experience as well

Rachael Herron: [00:10:33] Yeah

Melanie Abrams: [00:10:34] Because it’s just so bizarre. So yeah, so writing at night and writing in spurts, which is like what every, you know, writer or every, I don’t know what I’m looking for, is that every mother is told, “Oh, find the time to write whenever you can just write in these little pockets of time when the baby is sleeping or your kids are at school.” And I’ve always been like, “yeah, what the hell ever.” That’s like, you know, completely un-useful advice for me. But that’s kind of a little bit what’s happened with this last novel. So we’ll see how it goes. I mean, you know, this is very beginning times. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:05] Super exciting. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:11:06] Yeah. So, but as for like, writing in the middle of the pandemic, I definitely am writing very little fiction now. I have this book coming out, so there’s a lot, you know, everyone wants you to be doing all kinds of essay writing, so, in order to publicize the book. So that’s kind of what I’m doing right now and that definitely feels like work. Like I am not a nonfiction writer, at all. So, this definitely feels it’s, there’s not much pleasure involved in this kind of writing, so I feel like I can do it during the day or when I have to, you know, when it’s a quote unquote assignment.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:40] Yeah. Because it’s a put your butt in the chair kind of assignment. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:11:43] Yeah, exactly. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:44] I have a book due in three weeks to my editor, and I just have this really strange feeling, and I think this is the first time I, I’ve verbalized it, but like, this book has nothing to do with pandemic. And then, so why is it therefore existing? Like I have people hugging in it and I’m thinking, Oh, they hug, you know.

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:02] Boldly. Somebody else said that they were watching TV and every time somebody touched, they got close, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:12:08] I felt that last night.

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:10] Yeah. Yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:11] Totally. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:12] I mean I’ve thought about that too. Like, what is my next book going to look like? You know, how do you not write about the pandemic, after the pandemic. But someone had a really good point. We’ll see, we’ll see what happens. But, also, you know, not all books are about 911, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:28] Right and this is how we felt then. Yeah. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:29] Yeah. Exactly.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:30] That’s a very, very good point that actually makes me feel strangely better, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:32] Right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:33] In a terrible way. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:34] Yeah, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:36] Exactly. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:12:41] Definitely time. And childcare. I mean, I think you’re probably would hear this from any mother slash writer, you know, I applied, there’s, there’s some great grants out there like sustainable arts foundation, which is just for parents or even like yado or mucked out. The only reason I’m applying to any of those, ‘cause it buys you time. So that is exactly, I mean, that’s my biggest challenge is like the time piece of it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:07] Yeah. Yeah. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Melanie Abrams: [00:13:11] You know, it’s that kind of, you know, the, my, one of my favorite quotes is a Bob Haas quote, which is he says that, Writing is hell, not writing is hell. The only enjoyable part is having just written. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:23] Yes

Melanie Abrams: [00:13:24] Yeah, right? So I’m kind of a big fan of that quote, but that’s so pessimistic. So I will say the optimistic part of that is that those few and far between moments where you’re almost in this kind of dis-associative state where you’re like part writer, part your character in a way, or inside your book slash outside of your book. And of course they only last for a limited period of time, but that’s that’s a pretty good one. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:49] I wrote a bunch of words this morning before 7 because I had to, and I had that feeling and then it makes me think of that other Zadie Smith quote where she says, “The best time of writing is right after you sent it to your editor, and that only lasts for four and a half hours.”

Melanie Abrams: [00:14:04] Yeah, I agree. Every time someone sells a book, I’m like, enjoy it. This is the best time after you’ve sold it before you have to do any editing, that’s it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] Or right after you send it for that four and a half hour. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:14:14] Right, right.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:15] Exactly. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:14:20] Yeah. So I mean, my students, I think by now if they feel like they’re being hit over the head with me saying this all the time, but it is kind of my go to craft advice, which is that make just don’t neglect conflict. I usually use this Three D analogy, which is actually a Janet Borough analogy, but it’s desire plus danger equals drama. Like make sure your character wants something, put things in the way of them getting that thing and then if he can do that, then you’ve created drama, i.e.: Conflict. And just following that through your novel or short story. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:53] I love that phrasing. Can you tell us the Three D’s again? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:14:56] Yes, so it’s Three D’s, these are Desire, plus Danger equals Drama. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:01] That’s lovely. And yeah, that is something that everyone needs to remember. We don’t want to hurt our characters that we love so much. We don’t want to give them conflict. So, yeah. Perfect. Thank you. I think that your students are lucky that you hit them over the head with that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:15:20] I think, I think music this is particularly accurate for my, the novel I’m working on now, but I have found myself as I’ve gotten older, more and more, not necessarily influenced by music, but kind of existing in a space with music and the way I exist with books. And having the music kind of influenced the writing, which I, which is kind of a new thing to me, but it’s been pretty powerful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:48] So can you explain that a little bit more? Are you, do you choose music for your books and then live in it, or do they come to you around the book or how does that work?

Melanie Abrams: [00:15:58] Such a good question. It’s, I think it’s kind of fluid. I definitely have found myself lists like making a playlist and listening to that playlist over and over and over again, because that playlist is informing the book in some way. And it’s hard to, like again, using this magical word, but like, it does seem a little bit like magic. Like I’m not sure exactly how one influences the other, but I’m definitely drawn to using music as a way into the book. Yeah. So feel free to ask clarifying questions – 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:31] How do you, how do you find the music?

Melanie Abrams: [00:16:34] Yeah. Some of it you know, some of it is people recommend this or that that’s happened a couple of times. Some of it is all I, Oh well here’s a really good one. So there’s this do you know about radio paradise? Do you know that station?

Rachael Herron: [00:17:46] No, I do not.

Melanie Abrams: [00:16:47] So, radio paradise is a streaming service that is a brand by this like older couple outside, inside Paradise, California where there all the fires were, 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:57] Yeah

Melanie Abrams: [00:16:58] And its 24-hour streaming and they curate these playlists, which are, I believe basically made for me and, but really it’s like a very, it’s not that you have to be gen X to appreciate and love it because there-

Rachael Herron: [00:17:09] Which I am, so…

Melanie Abrams: [00:17:10] Right, but it definitely has a gen X slant to it. So it’s like, you know, there’s some stuff that’s familiar, some stuff that’s less familiar, and that has been super, super fantastic for exposing me to either new music or music that I knew that I forgot or, you know, just finding things that weren’t necessarily in my, you know, head well before I started actively pursuing new music. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:36] Yeah.

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:37] So I highly recommend 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:38] I have, I’ve been experimenting with music a lot more. For some reason, I had a couple of years where I wasn’t ready to music at all. And lately, I have been more pulled back to it. And I have found this way of, creating Spotify lists. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:17:50] Yeah

 Rachael Herron: [00:17:51] I am a Spotify person, so I’ll put on one of those like deep focus, John Hopkins, Moby kind of electronica stations. And then as soon as the music bothers me, I go back and replay the mu- the song that was right before it. Because I was obviously deep. And it didn’t bother me. And then if I love it, I move it over to a playlist for the book. But this is –

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:11] I love that

Rachael Herron: [00:18:12] Only occurred to me in the last two weeks. Like we’ve all been doing a lot of distraction focus work this year, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:18] Yeah

 Rachael Herron: [00:18:19] recently. So, but I love, I’m going to try radio paradise. That sounds fantastic. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:23] Yeah. And the other two things I would say is that, one is that if you like this kind of music book connection, I, if do you know about large hearted boy I website? 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:32] Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:34] So they, you know, I just did for the new book a playlist for them, based on the characters, which is super fun.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:39] I haven’t been in that website on in so long. I literally forgot that it existed. That’s awesome. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:44] Yeah, I’d recommend that.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:47] Cool! Okay, and you’re gonna say the second thing too. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:18:49] Oh, and the only, the second thing is, is that it’s interesting that you said you’re writing to music, because I find that I have, I get inspired by this music, but very, pretty quickly I have to turn it off. Like within, you know, I don’t know, 20 minutes of writing, like I have a hard time writing to music. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:04] For me, it has to, for the actual writing to music, it has to be without words. If there are words that I can understand, I can’t. Right now I’ve got like a, like a Gregorian chant. Like I was writing in the eighties right when I was, you know, 15, I’d put on Gregorian chants and write to. So maybe I’m going back to that,

Melanie Abrams: [00:19:20] That’s awesome.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:21] Yeah, but it’s all very strange. What is the best book that you read recently and why did you love it? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:19:26] Yeah. You know, I’m, I was thinking about this one, and I think I’m going to have to go with Three Women. Have you read that? 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:32] No

Melanie Abrams: [00:19:33] So it’s this nonfiction book that kind of blew me away. It’s about women’s desire and sexuality, and it’s traces the stories of these Three Women and it’s fascinating because it, I think it does an incredible job of really, nailing women’s desire and how they feel about sex and how they feel about their own sexuality and all those kinds of things. But as important to me was the way in which this, the author, it’s Lisa Taddeo, I think her name is? Is able to, write nonfiction in a way that feels as a. as compelling as fiction, and b. as voice-driven as fiction. And I think of that voice-driven piece of it was what I was just so amazingly impressed with.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:20] That sounds like everything that I want to read. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:20:22] Like, oh God, it’s so good.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:23] For me that my fa- my favorite kind of thing is to read nonfiction. Not always memoir, but something that is really, really voice-driven. Have you read Savage Appetite?

Melanie Abrams: [00:20:32] No, but I’m putting it on my list. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:34] It is if you have any interest in true crime, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:20:36] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:37] Or even if you’re just mildly titillated by it, you’re going to love this. It’s nonfiction and it’s got the strongest voice ever. And she, she takes apart four women who have been in the true crime area and takes them apart, and also talks about her own fascination with true crime and women’s fa- fascination with true crime. So, oh, thank you for the excellent book swap, because I’m absolutely going to read that one next.

Melanie Abrams: [00:21:00] Awesome. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:01] Speaking of wonderful books to read, would you tell us please about your latest book Meadowlark? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:21:06] Sure. So, Meadowlark is the, the backstory to the novel is that it’s there’s these two teenagers who grew up on a strict Eastern leaning spiritual compound. And they run away when they’re 15, and they lose touch. And they grow up in the, the present of the novel takes place, when they’re grown-ups. Simron, who is the, the girl who ran away is a photo journalist, and Arjun, who is the boy who ran away now has his own, is the head of his own kind of commune that believes in kind of allowing children to just be and discover their quote unquote special gifts. So it’s very opposite to what they grew up with. And there’s tensions between that commune, which is called Meadowlark and the police. And so he asks Simron, they reconnecting as Simron to come and photograph the commune. So to get their story out there, to kind of show that, you know, the normalcy of what they’re doing, which isn’t actually very normal at all. So she comes with her young daughter and ends up getting, caught in there as tensions between the police and the commune, heightened. So a little bit of a page journey thriller, a little bit of the literary kind of character driven thing. You know, we are all looking for.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:29] That’s a little prison of cult which we all, 

Melanie Abrams: [00:22:32] Right

Rachael Herron: [00:22:33] Oh, not we all but many of us, I don’t know why we’re so drawn to this. But I definitely am. I’ll read anything with that, and I haven’t read your book yet, but it’s at the top of my TPR pile. And I did read your book playing, which is just gorgeous and you’re such a beautiful writer. So I would really encourage people to go out and grab Meadowlark. You will not, not regret it. So, thank you so much. Oh, where can we find you online? Where, where are you? Where do you live? 

Melanie Abrams: [00:22:59] Yeah, Facebook, melanieabramswriter and Instagram, melanieabramswriter 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:04] Perfect. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:23:05] And obviously my website, melanieabrams.com 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:09] Yay! Thank you so much for being with me on this very weird, weird time. It’s incredibly nice to connect. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:23:16] Yes, absolutely. Thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:18] You’re welcome. And we will talk soon. Thanks so much for everything. 

Melanie Abrams: [00:23:21] Alright, 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. 180: Melanie Abrams on Bringing the Conflict appeared first on R. H. HERRON.

Ep. 179: Should You Get an MFA?

Bestselling author (and teacher) Rachael Herron talks about why you should (or shouldn’t) get an MFA in writing.

Transcript

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

Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #179! It’s a bonus mini episode with me, Rachael Herron. 

[00:00:22] And today I’m going to be talking about a question I get a lot and I’ve actually gotten it for some reason, three times in the last week. So I don’t know, maybe application season is upon us. But today I’m going to be talking about Should You Get your MFA? Let’s talk about it. What is an MFA? an MFA is a Master of Fine Arts, and you can get them in all of the fine arts, basically bookbinding and dancing and I don’t know if it, yeah, book finding would be a fine art, and fiction and poetry and creative nonfiction and whatever the heck else you want in Fine Arts. You can get a master’s degree in it, which is awesome. I have a master’s degree. I like having a master’s degree because I am snotty. And I like to say that I have one. I like to be able to have that. I always wanted a doctorate and I’ve even looked into getting a doctorate. I’m doing the next step and every time I do, I back away and say, no, I actually don’t want that. And there’s no reason for me to have one except for cache. That’s the only reason. And for me, that’s not a big enough reason.



[00:01:30] So let’s break it down. Should you get a Master of Fine Arts in Writing? I say, yes, you should get one if you want one. If you, and I’m not, I’m not just saying that flippantly. If you want one, if it will make you feel better about yourself as a human being, because of the cache or because you know, you always wanted a master’s degree in something, you want to prove your mastery over something with little letters that can go after your name. That’s a great reason. That is the- get one. Go ahead. But I would also add to this and get one if you want one, and you can afford it without going into debt. I think that going into debt for a Master of Fine Arts is so stupid. And I did it, so I get to say it, it was so dumb. I spent, almost, I spent like 17 years, paying that off I think. It was about maybe 16 years paying that off and some of you have heard me talk about this, but I did forbearance a million times. I was living in the Bay area as a dispatcher, not much money, no idea how many worked. So I was in a lot of debt in a lot of ways. So I kept pushing off, paying back that, that I had borrowed $40,000. But then, you know, I got the job and I start paying it back. I was paying $350 a month. I paid $26,000 of it back. So let’s do the math. I borrowed 40,000 I paid them 26,000, when I logged in to see how much I owed, I owed 50,000. That is how much the interest had gotten me. It’s just madness that after paying $26,000 of a $40,000 loan, I owed 50,000. I was so furious. There’s a blog post about it. You can search it on my site. But then my wife and I spent the next year throwing every single dollar we had at it and we paid it off in a year because I was so furious and we ate beans and I was working two jobs and we had the privilege to be able to do that. I have the privilege to be able to work a good full time 911 job, and I was making money writing, so pay that off. But I’m still, I’m still angry about that. 



[00:03:47] It was not worth that much money, so yeah, I spent $76,000 on that master’s. So if you can afford one to pay it out of pocket, or you know, earn as you go and pay it off, I think. Great. But if you’re already in debt, and you want to think about taking on more debt, no way. The masters will not help you make more money. That’s the thing. That my masters has never helped me make more money. Let’s talk about that. So I don’t think you should get them. 



[00:04:15] Here’s the reasons you shouldn’t get an MFA: If you think you’re going to learn what you think you need to know. Don’t get an MFA if you want to learn how to write. There are much better, much faster ways of learning how to write. I learned more, I say this all the time, but I learned more in my first two years with romance writers of America, which is right now in hell. Don’t join it. But it was, it was what it was when I joined. I learned more in my first two years with them about the craft and business of writing than I did getting my masters. The thing is, when you enter a master’s program, you are marrying their faculty and their students that joined, and perhaps the faculty is going to be amaze balls. But maybe a couple of teachers really aren’t that great and you’re gonna spend a lot of time learning from them. Whereas if you don’t get an MFA and you learn from everyone, you can learn from everyone. The place I learned to do writing. The, the place I have learned best from is in being edited. By being edited by my books. Being edited, that is where I learned. You do not have to get a New York contract to get your books edited, you can hire those editors on your own to make your books better, and then attempt to attract an agent and be traditionally published or then self-published. But where you learn is by doing the work, by writing, and then by being edited. That is how you learn to be a better writer. That’s how you learn everything. So, don’t get an MFA just to learn how to write. You’ll, you have a much bigger world to learn from. Don’t get an MFA if you think it will get you published. It will not. Agents do not care if you have an MFA. Publishers do not care if you have an MFA. They want a highly commercial book that will make them a lot of money. That’s what they’re looking for. By and large, that is what they are looking for. Don’t get an MFA if you think it’ll get you a teaching career. The market is completely saturated with MFAs and PhD candidates. those who are out there already can’t get permanent teaching gigs.



[00:06:30] I do teach at Stanford and at Berkeley, and it was made a little bit easier for me to teach, because of my MFA is just a tech check box. They could check off, but the thing is, I could have taught there anyway because I have an established writing career. I have books out. Once you have books out, you can teach. Boom. There you go. Bob’s your uncle. I did not know that Bob’s, your uncle was a New Zealand phrase. I’ve said it all my life cause I’m a half new Zealander and apparently the Americans don’t say it. This is blowing my mind. You should say Bob’s your uncle. You do something, you do something else, you Bob’s your uncle it, done. There you go. That’s a, that’s a writing tip you just learned and you’re not in MFA program. Okay, so don’t get an MFA. If you think it’s going to teach you how to write, it won’t, I mean, it will teach you a few things, but it won’t teach you everything you need to know. Don’t get it when, if you think it would get published. Don’t think, don’t get one if you think of, get your teaching career, this isn’t as important. Don’t get one if you think it’ll make you write. You will be just as big procrastinator in an MFA program as out of an MFA program. MFA programs do have the ability to make you write to a deadline. Your master’s thesis will be due on a day and it’s going to be probably a book or a half a book or whatever their thing is, and you’ll have to get it done by that day.



[00:07:50] But you could do that without paying them. My master’s thesis was done, it was half a book. I never picked it up again. It is terrible. It is in the college library where I went. It is bound. I picked it up one day and I tried to read a few pages. It was just so agonizing. It was not good. So, don’t get it for that reason. If you think it’ll make you write. Your whole life cannot be an ivory tower. Even if you give yourself two years in an MFA, you will come out and then just be back to normal life. So learning to write around a normal life is more important than getting an MFA. If you do decide for whatever reason, you can afford it and you want to get an MFA, fantastic. What kind? It is worth thinking about whether you want to write a literary novel, which is a genre. It’s just a genre or a commercial novel, which is, can be broken down into the books that sell a lot more than literary novels. So mystery, romance, science fiction, upmarket, women’s fiction, all of those. Because there are a few programs that particularly deal with commercial fiction, and the best ones that I know. Let’s see, Seton Hill is a fantastic, program. They are in, just outside of Pittsburgh. And, they are wonderful, my friend Nicole Fieler actually is the director of the program. And they teach you how to write a commercial book. Your ending thesis must be a finished novel. That will sell commercially. They don’t really talk about literary too much. Let me give you a few, a scary, well, actually, let me give you a couple more schools. USC also has, a commercial fiction orientation. Apparently NC state, Temple and Stone coast are other commercial fiction MFA. I’m not familiar with those, but I would think about going, if you’re getting an MFA, get one from a program that wants you to make some money from it. Eventually. 



[00:10:09] But speaking of money, depressingly, this was two years ago and this didn’t take a lot of self-publishing into consideration, but the authors guild did a large survey, which did include self-published authors. Just not a lot of them. The meeting income for all published authors based on book related activities fell from 3,900 to $3,100 per year. While full time traditionally published authors earned 12,400 per year. That’s, that’s the median. If you count all writing related activities, including teaching, whatever you’re doing to make money that is writing related as well as writing books. The median income was $20,000 a year. So when you keep that in mind, when you’re thinking about how much you want to pay for an MFA, how much money you would want to spend on that. You are probably not going to be able to pay it off with writing money, not for a very long time. So, if you can pay it off with something else, that’s fantastic. If you just want it to have it, great. If you want to have those two years in the ivory tower. Beautiful. That is what I wanted. I honestly wanted to be in school talking to people about writing, building a community, which by the way, I lost completely. We just are – our grad program just didn’t, it didn’t, it fell apart. Those people are not in my life. My life and my writing life is supported by this incredible web of interconnected writers, but none of them are from my MFA, not one single one, which is sad because I really like those people. 



[00:11:52] What else did I want to say? Oh, yes, I know. Pick up the book before you get an MFA, before you apply to a program. Pick up the book, DIY MFA. I have not read it, but it has incredible reviews and I was just looking about looking at what it’s about. And basically, it is, it’s three-part mission of the DIY MFA is to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. Those are the three things you’re looking for in an MFA program. You are, you need to learn how to write with focus, and ignore life around while you get the writing done. You need to learn how to read with purpose in order to learn from books you want to emulate or compete against, and build your community, which my graduate program didn’t manage to do somehow. So pick up the book. It’s like, I dunno, probably $50. Let’s see what it is. Oh, it’s 14.99 in Kindle that’s a lot, 19.99 on paperback. Just grab it, see if it helps you. See if it is something that you could do instead of, or perhaps you will get the book and then decide to do an MFA as well. Again, totally go for it if you want it. Just have those other things in mind that it will not help you do. That said, I guess I am glad I spent $76,000 on an MFA. Because I like to say I have one and I did have a good time in the ivory tower when I did spend those two years single, no kids, living in a little tree house and writing in Oakland and working at a, you know, as a waitress in a restaurant. Those were two good years of my life. But I didn’t spend much time writing. I spent the least amount of time writing that was possible to complete the program. And that is how writers do it. 



[00:13:38] So I hope this has helped a little bit. I don’t want to step on your MFA dreams. I really, really don’t. But I want you to have clear, open eyes and heart when it comes to what it means for you. So if this has helped, if this has helped you make up your mind, or if you say, screw you, Rachael, I’m going to get an MFA in order to write a highly literary novel, and I’m gonna put it on all credit card. Then, you know, that’s fine. You do you. But, these are my thoughts. So yes, thank you for these questions. Thank you for listening and I wish you very happy writing no matter where or when or how you are doing it. And we’ll talk soon my friends. 

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. 179: Should You Get an MFA? appeared first on R. H. HERRON.