Archives for October 2020

Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft, and cosmic horror. Her debut novel is The Year of the Witching. She grew up in one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, which instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. Currently, Alexis resides in the sun-soaked marshland of Charleston, South Carolina.

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 #203 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled that you are here with me today as I talk to Alexis Henderson. I have had the great, good fortunate recently of speaking to a lot of people in, there’s more interviews coming up. For some reason, I have a bumper crop right now, and there are episodes waiting in the wings which does not excuse the fact that this podcast is now by like 11 hours late. It’s okay. It’s my podcast. It’s alright that I 100% forgot to do it last night because I was so tired and, but I didn’t finish my thought, which was that I have been talking to some people who have written some books that I have a really loved that is not a requirement to come on the show. In fact, I do not have time to read all the books of everyone who comes on the show. However, Alexis Henderson blew me away with her book and it was a really wonderful to talk to her about something so creepy and dark and beautifully lyrically written as her book, The Year of the Witching. So I know that you will enjoy that. That is coming up.

[00:01:23] What is going on around here? What is not going on around here. In the bad news, our sweet dog, Clementine, who is older, she appears to be very sick and we were waiting for some biopsy results. However, they don’t look good. And, we are battling a lot of sadness because this will be the second of three dogs that we will have lost in mf-ing 2020. Speaking of mf-ing 2020, Trump has coronavirus. So there are silver linings. Oh my gosh. I know I lose followers and listeners every time I say things like that, and I don’t care. I have this texting service through Patreon, where if you support me at the $3 and up level, I send you encouraging texts to do your work, to be creative, to live life fully and this last week to vote. Just reminding you to vote and to encourage other people to vote. And oh my goodness. Somebody got so mad at me for saying something political. I honestly do not think saying that you should vote if you are in America and have the ability to do so is political. I wasn’t saying who to vote for, although everybody knows who I think you should vote for and it isn’t Trump. So yes, we let those patrons go. We let those listeners go. I really, truly believe that as writers, I’m being really serious all of a sudden. As writers, we must be political. That is our job. We have a skill set that most people do not have. We get to use our language, our words to help convince people of what we believe is the right thing to do- Waylon wails and agrees with me.

[00:03:16] Okay. Now I’m wearing the baby sling that I bought for the cat, which you cannot see on camera, but he’s on my lap. You might hear him purring. I think the purring is probably preferable to that wailing that he does. So, yeah. So that’s all I need to say about that. You already know that you have a skill given to you that you can use. I was phone banking last week for the first time ever. Wrote a Patreon essay about it and about calling blindly people to talk to them about how they’re feeling about this year was one of the scariest and most difficult and rewarding things that I have maybe ever done. So I have signed up to do it again, and we were not cold calling lists of Democrats. We were cold calling this of everyone. So it was, it was really fabulous to talk to people and I get to do that because I understand how language works. I’m much better on the page talking extemporaneously is not one of my skills, although I practice it a lot on this podcast. But I do know that skill with words is one of my super powers so I must use it. You must use, you must use it in your way. That is enough about that. In other news, I think we might be moving to New Zealand for real. Not just because of politics, not just because of our worries about an upcoming civil war or, but honestly, because I’m 48, Lala’s 52. We can move to New Zealand. We have the right to. We actually are allowed to enter right now. However, we do have to do the mandatory isolation, which is it’ll be about $4,000 for both of us to spend two weeks in a hotel room, not leaving. They bring you your food and your snacks and things like that.

[00:05:04] So, that sounds nightmarish. But, actually maybe getting out of the country for a while and trying something else, all politics aside, why wouldn’t we? Okay. Here’s why we wouldn’t because we’re comfortable because we are in this house because I finally have a flower garden that is gorgeous. Lala’s desk, she finally got it in exactly the right position for her to be able to work and to do her art. All our friends and family are here. We have a house full of stuff that we would have to do something with. None of it is easy, but I don’t know something about being in quarantine for so long has made me miss that, that feeling of challenge, that feeling of being pushed outside one’s comfort zone. And that I’m saying from a really, really great position of privilege. And I know that, my job is still paying me. Lala’s job is still paying her. We have the privilege to be able to say that and there are so many millions of people in this country on its own right now that are not comfortable, that have been forced into untenable situations. So I remain very grateful to where we are, but yeah. So right now we’re thinking about New Zealand. We’re thinking about just going and trying out different cities till we find a place where we would like to rent. So I don’t know how long that will take, but we’re working also on all sorts of paperwork requirements now and I’m having fun with that. So there might, or might not be a podcast coming out about making these decisions to move and the move. Don’t know. We are recording our conversations just so, we can, if we want to put one of those together or there’ll be helpful to me if I want to write about it. So that’s, what’s going in our world, kind of big things.  Writing-wise, I just wrote my Patreon this week. I haven’t been doing much of anything else, playing with a new book and revising. You’re already ready a little bit, but otherwise kind of, kind of going slowly and that’s okay. So wherever you are right now, whatever you are doing, whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable, I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done. I hope that you are taking things like screaming kitties and making them into a lap full of a love just by buying a baby sling. Going off on a tangent, let’s jump into the interview with Alexis. You are going to love it. Enjoy and happy writing my friends. 

[00:07:36] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:36] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. Alexis Henderson. Hello Alexis!

Alexis Henderson: [00:08:43] Hello. Thank you for having me, I’m so excited to be here.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:45] I, I am the one who is thrilled because I loved your book. I absolutely love it’s called “The Year of the Witching” and it was just, it was everything I want from like a dark, what’d you call it like a grim dark fantasy? What is the genre? You tell me what it is.

Alexis Henderson: [00:09:04] I say dark fantasy/horror because I can’t make up my mind and I think it kind of sits neatly between the two. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:10] It really does. It just ticked all of my boxes. I just loved it. Okay. Let me give you a little bio for people who don’t know you. Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer, that fits right there, with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft, and cosmic horror. Her debut novel is The Year of the Witching. She grew up in one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, which instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. Currently, Alexis resides in the sun-soaked marshland of Charleston, South Carolina, all places that I’ve always wanted to go. So this is your debut, congratulations.

Alexis Henderson: [00:09:44] Thank you so much. Thank you! 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:46] How has it been having the book out there? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:09:50] It is, it is mind blowing and challenging and interesting and wonderful. And I, I feel like just honored to have been on this journey. I mean, it’s been a weird year to debut because of this pandemic. But I think in some ways I’m weirdly grateful because I think that my experience is like, so unlike the average debut experience. I’ve met, like a lot of people, friends and stuff through these virtual events and these amazing opportunities and it’s been great to see the way the community has come together to support other debuts like me during this difficult time. So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:26] I’m so glad. Are you with, are you with Penguin? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:10:29] I am. Penguin random. My imprint is ace. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:32] Okay. I’m with Dutton over there. And I think that’s how we were originally connected because some of their publicists send me those books. And, and I was, it was one of those things where I, I normally, if I get the book ahead time before I talked to somebody on my podcast, I tend to skim it. But yours was impossible to skim. I like read the first couple of pages I’m like, well, there goes my weekend. So it was, it was one of those. It was just beautiful, scary, sexy the whole, the whole swamp. Oh, everything, everything, everything. The forest, I loved every part of it. So thank you for being here. And I would love to talk to you about your process for writing, because that’s what this show is really all about. How, what does your life look like right now? How do you fit the writing in, especially like with pandemic days? What does that, how did that work for you? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:11:24] So at the moment I’m, I’m writing like full time, just kind of focusing on this. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:28] Awesome.

Alexis Henderson: [00:11:29] I was fortunate in that before I was an author, I was like English teacher. So I taught English as a second language remotely. So I’ve always kind of had to like fall back on if necessary and there are certainly times when I did both, but it allowed me to control my own schedule. So right now I’m just kind of only writing and it’s been, it’s been really interesting. So, I was homeschooled from the first grade, all the way up to my senior year of high school. So I’m very used to kind of setting my own schedule and working and doing school from home. So I think that that piece comes naturally to me. The piece that doesn’t is dealing with a global pandemic and trying to focus on writing a book. That’s, that’s the learning curve for me at the moment. So it becomes a game of trying to block things out, but let enough in to where I don’t feel disconnected or ill-informed. So it’s kind of like where I am with the writing and at the moment I’m focusing on I’m writing the sequel to the Year of The Witching.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:26] I’m so glad. I was really hoping you were going to say that. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:12:30] Yeah. It’s been exciting. And I, I was telling someone, I was like, I realized I don’t actually know how to write a sequel. So it’s interesting to kind of teach yourself the ropes. I’ve never written a sequel before, so it’s interesting to sort of teach myself, like this is how you write a sequel as I’m trying to write a sequel. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:45] It was one of the hardest things I ever did because I sold a Stand Alone was my first book and they asked me for a sequel, but I hadn’t written the book with that in mind. And I also didn’t really know how to write a book. I don’t even know how I’d written the first book. So, so it was that, that book too can be challenging. Yeah. How, is it fun or?

Alexis Henderson: [00:13:07] It is fun. It’s fun. In a way, it feels like returning homes and then there’s so much world-building and like character development that I feel like don’t have to do because the foundation is there. And so I’ve never had a writing experience really, where I haven’t had to build everything from the bottom up. And so to have that freedom to just kind of take the characters in this journey and not have to worry about establishing them as much is wonderful and I can feel, I feel a little bit unleashed. Like I can just do whatever I want and that’s great. But it’s also course daunting, you know, trying to follow up my first book and, you know, wanting to fulfill the promises that I made in that book and the second it’s, yeah, I hope I can do it justice. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:44] Oh, I am sure. I’m sure that you can. What do your days look like? How much time do you spend on the writing? How much time do you spend on the business? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:13:52] You know, it varies day to day. This year I’ve had a lot of promo. And I think that is oftentimes because like so many of the events that, wouldn’t be available to me because they required a lot of travel. Like, you know, they’re all virtual now, so there’s really no way to say no that all these amazing events and panels and I want to do them all and I do. 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:11] Yeah, good point. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:14:13] Yeah. So because of that, my, my schedule, I think, has been more busy than maybe what have been in, in, in the business aspect. So, yeah, I, I, normally I wake up, I am thinking about the writing first and foremost in what I want to accomplish that day. But normally my approach is to try to get all of my emails out and kind of like, before I took my social media hiatus, I would try to like, you know, check on my notifications and DMS and all of that. And then I would get to the writing once I felt like that was kind of designated box.  But now that I know I’m on a tighter deadline, that’s kind of reversed. So it’s like writing and a little bit of like answering emails, social media, my response times have gotten longer because of that and then more writing and just kind of trying to fit things in around the writing. Because at the end of the day, that is the most important and I feel like, after I published the book, it was just kind of like I had to readjust and remember that like my primary job and my primary focus should be the writing. And so you kind of shifting from the promo and the business side, back to my writing or my roots, has been good for me, I think.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:17] Oh, I love that. And at the end of the day, are we going to be proud of the emails we sent or the books that we wrote. So 

Alexis Henderson: [00:15:24] That’s so true. I, I should write that up. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:28] It’s something that I’m, I’m constantly thinking of. I’m constantly like you should, you know, you should be writing that, not doing your email. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:15:38] God, there’s so many, it’s so hard to choose from. You know, I think that characters are a real challenge, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:45] That does not show in your writing. Your characters are so full and rich. Amazing

Alexis Henderson: [00:15:49] Thank you so much hard, hard fought. I feel like a lot of revisions, I think go into just kind of making them feel that like as fleshed out as possible, or at least as fleshed out as they do in my head, because it’s amazing how much you can lose when you’re like going from your head, putting it on the page. And so maybe I would say that’s also one of my biggest challenges is taking everything up here, which feels so fully formed and making that translated because I often find that there’s like this dissonance between the two or disconnect. And so making sure that what’s in my head is present in the book is like a constant struggle. And it’s like trial and error. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:24] It’s one of those things that, yeah, editors are so good at. Cause they’re the ones who pointed out to us. Cause we don’t know. We think that we have presented our brain onto the page and it’s just not there. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:16:33] It’s so, so true. Thank God for them, because I don’t know what I would do, but didn’t have someone to, like you say, like, this is not coming together. Please fix this. It’s just, just the best thing ever. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:44] Editors are the best. Who is your editor? I’ve been with a couple of editors

Alexis Henderson: [00:16:47] So Jessica Wayne and she’s so smart, she’s so smart. And she has such a keen editorial eye, but I think that, I aspire to give edits the way she does, because she’s just, she’s so clear in her direction, but she’s also just a genuinely kind person. So I never feel like hurt or attacked by any of her edits to mention explains things so well. Yeah, she’s great. And her ideas and her suggestions are also really, really great. So I feel like I’m in good hands with her 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:14] I feel like as writers that’s where we learn the most is being edited. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:17:18] Yeah, for sure. Definitely. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:20] What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:17:24] I like that stage it’s- it’s, this is a little kind of cheating because it occurs right before I start writing. And it’s when I get this idea and I become obsessed with it and I’m making Pinterest boards and playlist, and I’m dreaming about the characters and I’m writing like plot outlines on my napkins at like restaurants. Like that’s my favorite part. I sometimes I feel like I wait, sometimes it takes years between ideas that grab me like that. And when they do, it’s just like a drop everything. It feels like falling in love almost like it’s so fast. And I just, that’s what I love and I feel like I’m always chasing that feeling and it comes and goes, I always love writing, but that specific feeling comes and goes, but I feel like once you felt at once, it’s almost like addicting. Like it’s just, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:13] Yes! That’s the way I’m thinking of it, when you’re speaking of it, it’s that, it’s that high that we get when we’re on it. And we’re always trying to get it again.

Alexis Henderson: [00:18:20] So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:21] Oh, and then the problem is of course, when you’re in the middle of the book and you’re like, I would rather write a recipe book right now, you know, any, anything else.

Alexis Henderson: [00:18:30] A math textbook, really anything, 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:36] Very bad idea for me. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:18:41] Yeah. The one that made the most difference for me, must finish what you start. I don’t remember where I first heard it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:48] Yes

Alexis Henderson: [00:18:49] Yeah. I told him, he told to me, and I think it’s so important to break yourself of that habit that a lot of new writers fall into, which is where you start a project. It gets hard, like you just mentioned, and then you abandon it for the shiny new thing. And it’s a vicious cycle I can go on and on and on. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:04] It can last for life

Alexis Henderson: [00:19:05] So when I started, yes, and I’ve seen that like writers who’ve spent a decade or more just kind of abandoning projects. Like I, I started kind of falling people like writers since community when I was pretty young. I think it was like around 13 when I first developed my obsession with theory shark, and, you know, I would see people who are just for literally years, we’re kind of like your start and restart projects. And I was one of them for a long time. But I think that when I was purposeful about the projects that I started, and then it was purposeful about finishing them kind of making this like unspoken contract with myself that every book that I started, I, actually, it wasn’t even unspoken. I told myself if you get 30,000, it was 10, 10 or 30,000 words within a book, to into the book, you have to finish it. You have to give it an ending because if you don’t finish the books that you start, you don’t actually know how to write books, you know how to write beginnings. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:57] Yes, yes

Alexis Henderson: [00:19:58] That’s, that’s when I think my writing process sort of changed a lot and I grew so much from just learning how to put endings on things.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:08] Well, I was wait, so 2006, I was 34 before I ended a book and I had a master’s in this and I still just didn’t know how to finish a book. So the fact that you’re doing this earlier than you, how- do you mind if I ask you how old you are? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:20:22] No, no, no. I’m 24. I’m still 24

Rachael Herron: [00:20:26] Amazing! Like the, the fact that, you know that finishing is like this magic potion is everything that is so freaking cool. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:20:44] Oh, that’s a good question. Music, I can’t, I can’t start writing a book until I have the playlist. Right. I mean, I spent months trying to get the sound, the sound of the book right before I started, because if that doesn’t fall into place, I just don’t know what the narrator’s voice feels like or how 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:02] Interesting. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:21:03] Yeah. So music is a big thing for me, but also, what kind of tea I’m drinking. Like I’m hard pressed to be able to get anything done. If I don’t have like a good cup of tea and a good coat, it’s like the right to cover tea emotionally for me in that moment, sometimes it’s Green Jasmine, sometimes it’s a black tea, a little bit of almond milk, whatever it is I just need. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:24] Okay. So I want to, I have so many questions about these kinds of things. Cause these are the processing’s that I love. So if you’re drinking the black tea with almond milk, say, is that going to last for the book or is it just on a day to day kind of basis? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:21:39] I think that normally with each book I have like three teas’, that are just the teas that I have to drink during that book. So I remember a book I wrote a few years ago, not The Year of the Witching, but I really got hooked on this gunpowder green tea had this like 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:53] I love the gunpowder

Alexis Henderson: [00:21:54] it too, so good. And the book was about well, one of the major themes in the book was fire and smoke and ruin. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I got fixated on this gunpowder, smoky gunpowder green tea at the time I was writing that. So I do think that, you know, from the music to the tea, sometimes I bring candles or incense. All of it is helping me kind of ground myself in the story. And I think that in books, I put so much of myself into the story, but sometimes I just want like, little details from the story to be present in my life too. And I think that the music and the tea is kind of a way of me like bringing the story into my like physical products. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:32] What a gorgeous way to say that. And I’ve had the experience of like every once in a while, out in the real world- world running into one of the songs, it was a major pivotal part of my soundtrack. And I have been known to burst into tears because that was the scene where Robin died, you know, I love that. So your, so your playlist, are you, where are you making this on Spotify or Pandora? Or?

Alexis Henderson: [00:22:51] I’m using Apple music 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:52] Apple music

Alexis Henderson: [00:22:54] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:55] And how long is your playlist?

Alexis Henderson: [00:22:57] Hundreds of songs, hundreds of songs. I, I will kill hours looking through like the classical music or my actual favorite section to dig through is movie scores 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:08] Yes

Alexis Henderson: [00:23:09] And so I will look at Apple all the new releases I’ll look at what’s on sale. I kind of just sort of like add to my collection, my ever growing collection of movie soundtracks. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:19] Is it mostly worthless or?

Alexis Henderson: [00:23:23] Mostly with a few exceptions. So I think my biggest exception is probably Florence New Machine I’ve listened to for years. I love her music. She’s just so talented and brilliant. But for the most part, I try not to listen to too many songs with words, because I have this weird thing where like a, hear a word, a song or a phrase, and like the words for that phrase will appear in my book. Like if it mentions wind, I’ll have wind 17 times on one page. So I, I’m susceptible to like, cause like Osmos. 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:55] The suggestions. Yeah. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:23:56] So yeah. I try to avoid listening to like Beyonce too much when I’m like writing all with lemonade here, like rearranged in my book. So, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:08] You know that would not be a bad thing at all. So maybe not a particular book. Right. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? And why did you love it? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:24:18] I have here The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:23] Gorgeous cover. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:24:24] Yeah it’s a thriller fantasy, and you look at them like the shine on it, it’s so beautiful. I can’t stop looking at it. And it has the rest of it kinda has this like nice, it’s like almost matte feeling. It’s a really, really great book. It’s a, I would say like a dark contemporary white fantasy. It’s very witchy. And I would pitch it as the craft with the voice of getting in the ninth. It’s quite good. It just came out, I think two or three days ago and Hannah is great and they wrote an amazing book. So, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:56] That sounds amazing. I want to, I’m putting that on my TBR pile now. Oh, that’s so, so, so you love the witchy stuff as do I, I’ve got like four tarot card, tarot decks right here. How, how much does that inform the craft of your writing? 

Alexis Henderson: [00:25:15] You know, I think I, I’m just so inspired, I think by like the imagery of all these witchy things and like the vibes and the feeling. So structurally, I think I always knew that I wanted to experiment with something that was kind of opposed to systems of power that are kind of in control in our world. And I felt like at which you quote things, you’re just kind of like a natural rival to that. And it’s very much kind of like. I think representative of like the underdog, but people, also people who traditionally don’t have a lot of a power claiming it for themselves by like new means through the occult. So yeah, I think that’s something that be probably stick with me in the stories that I write for, I hope years to come, because I think there’s so many different ways to approach that. And I was excited to do The Year of the Witching, but I’m also kind of up for the challenge of exploring that more, and seeing how else I can like manifest those themes in different stories and different worlds. 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:10] I would like to subscribe to your newsletter immediately so I can stay abreast of all of these things that you are going to come up with. That is amazing. I’ve just lost my notes here. Oh, well easily. What would you, you know what, tell us where we can find you online, but I would also, could you give us like a little bit of an elevator pitch to get people into The Year of the Witching.

Alexis Henderson: [00:26:30] Yeah. So, The Year of the Witching here is a dark fantasy novel, I know she’s so pretty, so dark fantasy/horror novel about a young girl named Immanuel, who, is a shepherdess and she lives in a very rigid puritanical society that’s ruled by a prophet who is pretty close to all powerful. And one day Immanuel enters the forbidden woods that surround her home and there she encounters spirits of four dead witches and they reveal dark secrets about her own past and the church. So it is, 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:03] her my mother, I love a mother-daughter story also, I’m a big knitter, spinner person. So you got all the fiber details right too. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:27:12] Thank you. I did research, I only crochet and I’m not great at it, but I did research. I would love to be able to do more.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:20] I’m very, I’m very critical, especially when it comes to like the wool and you’ve got it. You just nailed it. So 

Alexis Henderson: [00:27:25] Thank you! Thank you. Oh my gosh. It’s just like, I think one of my favorite compliments I’ve ever received because no one has picked up on it from the research I did. I’m like, yes, that four hours spent researching textiles was well spent, thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:39] Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. Okay. So where can we find you online? Where do you prefer to be found?

Alexis Henderson: [00:27:43] I’m on Twitter @alexhwrites and Instagram is LexisH, and then I have a website, alexishenderson and you can subscribe to the newsletter that I haven’t written yet, but you can subscribe to it there. I will release a newsletter eventually. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:01] Good. Just as long as you have a place to capture these people. Yeah. Can I ask just not on the list of questions, but the, your incredible cover. Did they do a photo shoot for you or is that like an amazing stock photo? They found somewhere?

Alexis Henderson: [00:28:13] This is a photo shoot. Yeah. So do I think her name is Eve is actually a really close to Immanuel’s age and I think that she’s just such a beautiful embodiment of that character. So this is a photo shoot, and then Katie Anderson did some like

Rachael Herron: [00:28:31] Manipulation 

Alexis Henderson: [00:28:32] Yeah, and some work to make it look like this. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:34] it’s perfect. 

Alexis Henderson: [00:28:36] I think so too. I love, I love, love, love this cover. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:40] I’m so glad we got a chance to talk Alexis. I am so looking forward to following your future progress up into the skies because I, I just love your book. I can’t, I can’t make that more clear. So thank you for being on the show!

Alexis Henderson: [00:28:53] Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it. I had a great time. 

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.

Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist. She is the author of The Heartbreak Pill (Simon and Schuster, 2008), 2009 winner of the Latino International Book Award, and of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Kensington Publishing & Penguin Random House, 2014). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as in The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Vogue, The New York Times (“Modern Love”), The Hong Kong Review, NPR, and HBO, among others. A Bread Loaf Conference alumni, she won an Emmy Award for feature writing in 1994, served as a judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award in 2015, and was a Peter Taylor Fellow in Fiction in 2016. Her short story “Lucky” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and lives in Miami, Florida. 

Anjanette in Modern Love.

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] 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 #202 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thank you for all your sweet emails and comments lately. Yes, I have been having the best guests. Haven’t I? Becca Sime, Ed Giordano. And today we have Anjanette Delgado who you are really going to enjoy listening to. She tells us a little bit about the magic of pre-production when it comes to writing novels. Also, she wanted to let me know that she forgot to say something and she really wanted to point it out that she loves working in Granthika, which is the program that Vikram Chandra was talking about a few episodes back. So I wanted to make sure that we got in that plug for Vikram’s program, Granthika. In case you haven’t checked it out, there’s a free version you can try. So you’re going to love listening to Anjanette. She’s one of those people that I ended up hanging out with just hoping that we would go on being friends, which is, really not a bad reason to do a podcast, I have to tell you. 

[00:01:12] So a little bit of catch up around here. Honestly, I don’t have much writing catch up to catch you up on. I have been just kind of punching away at the memoir, trying to get it into some shape, struggling with this revision and a little bit more of a struggle than I expected, which is fine. I am up to the task, but I have been really distracted. There’s not much going on, only fall of democracy as we know it. Lala and I have been very preoccupied about again, thinking about moving out of this country. There’s always been the thing that has told us don’t go, you can’t give up. People, I’m ready to give up. I really, I really am. We’re looking into New Zealand because we can go there since I have citizenship. However, they have a very expensive quarantine, it’s two weeks and $3,000 each, which is great. I mean, they’re keeping COVID out of the nation. That’s fantastic because they are clear of it. But that’s, that’s a little costly plus, you know, importing dogs. And so we’re looking at other places too. I don’t know if you are feeling a little beaten up by news. If you are American, I feel you and I also ache for you. So please know that I am with you there. The indictment of just the one officer in the killing of Brianna Taylor has me just beyond furious and it’s very difficult. 

[00:02:45] It’s difficult to wrestle with all of this and get our work done, our writing done and get our jobs done, if we have another job and watch the kids, if we have kids and take care of parents, if you’re taking care of parents. This is heavy. This is a lot. If you are struggling to get your writing done, do remember that when I get my head in the game, which is generally just every morning for a couple of hours or when I go to RachaelSaysWrite, which I’m going to do this afternoon, thank goodness. I escape and it is such a good escape. It is so fun. So remember that you have that as one of your super powers, the ability to escape into your work. What other escapes have I been having? Well, I binged the home edit. I might’ve mentioned that and I have just been in really solid nesting mode. My office, you will see over my shoulder looks, Oh, there’s a dog. It looks fabulous. The office is fantastic. I’m gonna attack the kitchen next. The really nice thing is that there’s no weird corners full of stuff. I tend to be a pack rat and my wife is a lot more of a pack rat than I am, I must say. And so we have stuff upon our stuff under our stuff, over our stuff. I usually try to keep surfaces clear, but I, you know, you’ve seen over my shoulder, I don’t usually manage that. So all of this nesting that I’ve been doing between books is going to make packing a lot easier if we go. So yeah. It’s that’s exciting. So yeah, the kitchen is next. I’ve got all sorts of containers to put things in. Even the Marie Kondo would be rolling over in her beautifully 400 thread, 500 thread count sheets to know that I bought containers to organize things into. But, I love a container. I love the container store. I really love Daiso, which we have a couple of nearby. It’s a Japanese store where you can buy basically the same things you can get at the container store, but they’re all a dollar 50 or $2, it’s like a really cool dollar store. If you’re looking over my shoulder, the creek that you all just heard is my dog, letting herself out, our dog Clementine, that was Dozy. Our dog Clementine’s still sick, not feeling well, suffering pancreatitis, and maybe some kind of infection. So we’ve been spending a lot of time and mental energy and a lot of money, but you know, that’s what money is for on her. 

[00:05:07] So that’s what we’re dealing with and I will say that even though I’m ground down by the news, I am still hot and heavy in this romance with my work, even though I’m complaining about the revision, I’m still getting there and I’m loving it when my head is in it. I am also allowing you to remember that it’s hard. It’s hard right now. So give yourself some grace. Don’t beat yourself up. If you’ve been struggling to get to the page, just get to the page and do a little bit. You’re the only one who can do this. I was watching Austin Kleon on, an older video, a couple year old video, and he reminds us to do the noun. Wait, sorry. Do the verb, not the noun. You want to do the verb, not the noun. You want to be a writer? That’s great. You want to think about writing? You want to read books about writing. Awesome. But you got to do the verb in order to be a writer. You got to sit down and write, even though it is uncomfortable and the only things that comes out of your finger, fingers are things that you hate. That’s fine. You will revise them later and revision is difficult. I’m leading an amazing group through 90 days, A 90-day revision right now. And every time I teach this class, I am reminded, Oh my God. It is so hard to learn how to do this. Once you get the skills though, they’re your skills forever. So that’s great. I wanted to give a quick shout out to new patrons. Thank you, Anne-Marie. Thank you, John Rindfleisch VIII, you just edited your pledge up and now I am your mini coach. Same thing to Stephanie Bond. Stephanie Bond, you’re amazing. Love you. You’re the best. Katrina Dixon, thank you and Sasha Plaque. Oh, thanks Sasha. It’s it means a lot to have you. I love your show, shows.

[00:06:56] So let’s jump into the interview with Anjanette. She will pull us out of this state of existential despair, at least for a few moments. And then when you’re done listening, maybe you can go find some respite in your own work. Okay. Tell me how you’re doing, find me anywhere online. I’d love to hear from you. And I wish you a very happy writing my friends.

[00:07:18] 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: [00:08:00] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today on Anjanette Delgado. Anjanette. I said it wrong. Anjanette. Hello! Welcome.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:08:08] Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:10] I’m so happy to have you here. Okay. Let me give you a little introduction. Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist. She is the author of “The Heartbreak Pill” from the Simon and Schuster, the 2009 winner of the Latino International Book Award, and of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho, from Kensington. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as in the Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Vogue, The New York Times, the Modern Love might I add, NPR, and HBO, among others. A Bread Loaf Conference alumni, she won an Emmy Award for feature writing in 1994, served as a judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award in 2015, and was a Peter Taylor Fellow in Fiction in 2016. Her short story “Lucky” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and lives in Miami, Florida. That’s a stellar bio there.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:07] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:09] That is so exciting and 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:10] Thank you. I was just, as you were reading, I was just noticing oh my gosh she, that’s how you spell that, that’s how you pronounce Pleiades. I’ve never known how to pronounce it. I get nominated. Yeah I think it nominated me for an award. I should learn how to pronounce the name of the journal but-

Rachael Herron: [00:09:27] The thing is though, I always say that like readers, when we don’t know how to pronounce something is because we read so much, you know, we’ve never heard it, but it makes us smarter. That’s all.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:36] May I steal that? 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:37] Yes. You should steal that. Okay. So I just read your Modern Love piece. It’s beautiful. And it gave me a good flavor for your writing. And I was looking at your books. The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho was, I, I think on one of the pages I saw it’s described as a recovering clairvoyant, is that right?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:09:56] Yeah. She’s a really bad clairvoyant. She’s just, you know, it’s really incompetent. Partly because she has decided that, you know, this gift has to be perfect, this talent of hers has to be perfect. And when it isn’t perfect, she then sets it aside. Doesn’t practice. Doesn’t listen to it. And so of course it atrophies. Right? And so, yeah, she’s, she’s, she’s just now beginning to think that she may need to pick it up after all. Pick it back up again because, she needs, she needs this. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:31] That has just, that book has just flown to the top of my TBR file, I must read it. Let’s talk a little bit about your process. The show is all about process. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:40] Sure

Rachael Herron: [00:10:41] How do you get your writing done? Where do you get your writing done? If people are looking on the YouTube video, there’s this a beautiful desk behind you, is that your workspace?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:49] It’s an old table. Yes. I actually just bought it at a vintage, it’s-

Rachael Herron: [00:10:53] It’s gorgeous.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:10:54] And that’s where I used to, to write. It’s just like a little sofa that sort of serves like a, almost like a dining bench. For some reason, I do not like writing on proper desks. I don’t know why.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:09] What do you think-

Anjanette Delgado: [00:11:10] I don’t know what that’s about. I do. I just, it makes me feel cycled a little you’re like, okay. So for example, I like to write at the kitchen counter where I’m talking to you from right now. I love when, you know, before pre-pandemic, I used to go to cafes. In another life I was a journalist, so I would write in a newsroom and you have a deadline and it doesn’t matter what’s happening. You, you will write when you have a deadline, that’s that day you will write. And so, and you learn to shut everything out, you know. Yeah. And my husband complaints a lot, because he says that sometimes I’ll be reading and he’s, you know, he’s been calling to me for, I don’t know, how many minutes and I don’t listen and I just, I really don’t. I just tune it out. So that comes from that training. I don’t like to be isolated when writing, so I’m inside, I’m isolated inside myself. I like to see people and, you know, just a lot of activity around me. And I think I get that from, you know, not being at a desk, but just sort of being like in the middle of the house, in the middle of wherever, whatever is happening.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:18] In terms of writers strengths, I think that has to be such a gift. You know, it’s kind of like those people who can just lie down and fall asleep when they close their eyes.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:25] Yes. Me. Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:12:27] You also? 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:28] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:12:29] Oh my god. I wonder if there’s some kind of connection to that. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:30] There might be.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:31] You could just turn off the world when you need to.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:12:34] There might be, but, you know, I think I know how I developed it, like partly obviously was because of the job, you know, right, being a journalist working in a newsroom that happens. But I also realized thinking about it, that when I was a child, I would also just get inside the book. And once I was in the story, people would be calling me and I wouldn’t hear a thing. And you know, there could be a fire right next to me and I wouldn’t even notice. And I think reading gives you the ability to focus. When people tell me I’m not able to read, I know that they haven’t practiced reading enough, to get to the point where your brain is making the pictures automatically and you’re not noticing that you are reading. Right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:15] And it really is practice. Yeah. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:16] Right. And I think if somebody wants to be able to develop that ability to, you know, not to be distracted by every little noise around reading, well do it. Getting a lot reading more than two hours. You know, when I have a student that has an issue getting into a story, I said, okay, set a clock and don’t stop. You’ll notice that as you get closer to that two hours, you forget you’re reading.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:41] You’re super deep. Yeah. And that’s the best, best feeling. So right now, during pandemic, you are working from home. How is that shift? 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:50] I am

Rachael Herron: [00:13:51] And I’m also a cafe writer. I hate writing at home. I do everything else at home, but not writing.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:13:56] Well, I’ll tell you, I feel incredibly lucky and blessed that I don’t, you know, nobody I know or love directly, you know, has, has, have been sick so far. I do live in Miami.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:07] Hotspot.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:08] So, you know what we make, what we have in the sun, we make up for it that’s a, maybe sometimes. So I’m happy to stay home and be safe rather than be out there with people not following basic rules and also, I don’t know that you’ll find a writer that will tell you that they didn’t find a silver lining in this whole thing,

Rachael Herron: [00:14:33] I know

Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:34] I just feel like we needed to slow down a little bit and you know, I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen this way, but I, but I do think there’s that silver lining to it. If you will.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:43] That’s slowing down has been so gorgeous in so many ways. And just like you, I would never have wanted this to happen, but to be forced to slow down is pretty, pretty wonderful.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:14:51] Yeah. I have to learn how to do it to myself. Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] Yeah. And how we keep this, if we ever get back, if we ever get back to something approaching normal, how to keep this feeling.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:15:01] Exactly. Exactly. So I think, did I answer your question? I’m sorry if I started chatting with you.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:08] I think so. N o, no, no. Yeah. So, so, so now do you write at your counters where you’re mostly at.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:15:14] Yeah, I am right now, it’s my counter. It may be my, my table, tomorrow, just wherever I feel in the middle of, and not some place where it’s I plan to write here and where, you know, you look at the place and, oh dear, you know, the, the folders with the research are perfectly lined with markers color-coded, of course. And it’s just saying you have, you know, when you, when I look at that, it’s like you have to write, whereas where I write, when I allow myself to write wherever, you know, you could write. It could be magical. You don’t have to, nobody’s forcing you but, you know, you could.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:50] Oh, I love that. I’m, I’m a little jealous of that. I’m one of those isolated writers I’ve gotta like, if I’m not isolated, I have to put the things in my ears and turn up the white noise so loud so everything is drowned out. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:04] My biggest challenge is my life be having it be too full, right. And not being able sometimes to decide how full it can be at any given moment. So right now I’m editing an anthology and I’m happy. I am, no, very excited about it. I am teaching MFA students for the first time. I’ve always wanted to teach and I’ve taught, but you know, mostly lecturing or, you know, it’s still,

Rachael Herron: [00:16:33] Are you all online now?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:35] My school will be online. Mostly online. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:38] Yeah. That’s good. That’s good.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:42] And so there’s all these things happening, right. I just finished my third novel.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:45] Congratulations.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:16:47] Oh, thank you. And hopefully it’ll go to my agent soon so he can tell me how to rewrite it. And so all of those competing things that I love to do, right. Saying no to this and that, that I also love and just kind of, you know, focusing, but I do write every day and I found that if I have a lot of projects, a lot of writing projects, that helps, the other thing that helps me a lot is to write when I’m not writing. So, because I wrote my first novel, When I Was the Mother of Two Teenagers, I learned to get those moments. I’d never, I could never tell you, Rachael. I have to wait until I have a full afternoon. Because it takes me so long to get into the concentration of the page that once I get there, you know, I can’t just stand up and have to go do something else. 

But I learned that if I did something called pre-production and that again comes from my TV days and I teach a class called Finish Your Novel the TV Way, which is, which is basically using what I learned as a TV writer and working with new writers. Oh my goodness. Let me tell you. When you are getting paid to write, you write. I don’t know you write well, but I know you write. So my class isn’t about that writing veterans so there’s a lot of other people that can do better. You know, how to write better. I’m just, I just tell them what I use, because I need to get paid and to get, you know, to get paid, you have to finish, right. It’s not enough to start and it’s not enough to spend X amount of hours. You have to have a plan for, for finishing something.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:29] A plan and that deadline that goes with it. Yeah.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:18:30] A plan and sometimes it’s your own deadline, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:18:33] Yeah. Yeah.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:18:34] So, so one of the things that TV writers do or have is that the world is built. Right. There’s a head writer that has imagined or conceived of this series. Let’s, let’s come, let’s compare this series to a novel, right? So a novel, a series that has, let’s say 26 episodes and a novel may have 20 to 26 chapters. When you think about in terms of arc they’re similar, but the TV writers starts with, okay, this is the world, this is the tone, these are the characters more or less, you know while we’re casting, start with an idea. So I started doing that for myself. For example, I would go online or on a magazine and I would kind of cast my characters and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to describe the picture exactly. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:26] It just something in your head

Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:27] Well, it forces you to think, why did you think this picture? Because then you say, well, yes, Mark Ruffalo looks just like Peter, but what is it about the essence of Mark? Well, you know, he looks boyish, but he looks earnest or, and that, that forces you to think about your character in a deeper way and maybe

Rachael Herron: [00:19:47] That’s genius.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:48] And you throw away the picture, right? 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:50] Right. It becomes your character after awhile

Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:53] But you found, what was it that called you to that image as opposed to having to draw paint from, you know, from scratch to begin with, start from like, you would start, you know, like people sometimes will base a character on a friend or a, or a family  member. It’s the same. You’re just doing it with a photo and kind of using that process to tell yourself what calls to you, what, what is in your head already. The same I do, I do a map and I like to know where each place is. Right. But all of that, what I call pre-production helps you because of one day I just have 10 minutes and I don’t know where I am in a scene. I may use those 10 minutes to think about what a character may be cooking in a scene I know I have to write later, just gets that out of the way, you know, so that I use that time. And, and I keep myself in the world of my novel. If that makes sense. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:50] I have done this show for four years now, and I have never heard this. It is so helpful to think of using these little bits of time to do little pieces of pre-production so that when you get there, you’ve already worked on some of this stuff. This is kind of blowing my mind. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:21:06] Right? Well, because when you’re saying, has, has it ever happened? Good on Saturday, I have the whole afternoon to write, I’m so excited. You sit down with your tea, right. Your color-coded research, your whole thing, and you, and then you start to see it in your like, and you, and you, cause then it’s like information for information. So you go, so then you think, Oh, I need to do more research. And then you go down the rabbit hole of more research for God knows when, but if you have specific, so I’ll do like a little homework list. Oh wait. I have to think about, songs. I need some songs. \

Rachael Herron: [00:21:42] Oh my gosh. This is amazing

Anjanette Delgado: [00:21:43] And then, yeah. And I put it in the notes, my phone, I mean, nothing fancy. And then when I’m at the doctors or wherever I am when I have 10 minutes, 15 minutes to kill, but I wasn’t expecting, I said, Oh, you know, I don’t have a head sometimes to, to write. My, my head is, you know, my head hurts, or it’s too much. I can’t, I can’t concentrate, but I can concentrate on finding a few songs. That I can always do. I can look up research for what a name of a character might mean. I could look at a map of the neighborhood where it takes place and do a Google satellite just to familiarize myself with what the streets might look like right now. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:20] Oh my God, Anjanette. This is

Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:21] Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] Especially having the list to work from.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:25] Right. Cause you won’t think about it in 10 minutes, Right? You won’t think about what you may spend the 10 minutes thinking, what would I –

Rachael Herron: [00:22:31] Just trying to think of something. Yeah.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:32] Yeah, no, but it’s just pick something from there that that would adjust to the time you have. And then that also helps when you do have the 4 hours of luxuries, you know, because you have a lot of information that you’re excited about.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:46] Oh my gosh, this is, this is, this is blowing my mind. And it’s so good. So, so let me ask you, in terms of your process, are you a plotter or a fly by the seat of your pantser?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:22:58] I do not like to be a pantser, but I do admit that sometimes the fancy strikes and I’ll just, you know, start thinking that I am a pantser, but I’m not, I’m not, I like to, I like to plot loosely, let’s call it, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:13] Okay. Yeah

Anjanette Delgado: [00:23:14] I’m a loose water. Right. So I like to have, I like to understand the world. I don’t need to know every detail about the world that I’m going to be writing about, but I do need to know some. Right. Some basic things. I like to know something about my character. I don’t think so much in terms of like what’s in her closet and doing a whole biography. Because if I start doing all of that, I’ll get lost in all that. Right. I’m the kind of, of students, when I was a student, you know, I’m the person with all the markers and all their little tab divided notebooks and, you know, I could get, I could get really lost in all that process, too much process. So I try to keep it practical to what I will use to know enough to start laying out something and I’ll kind of go back and forth, right? Maybe that I started by plotting a bit loosely and I started to write and I realized, wait a minute, something’s missing. I need to go back to plotting a little more, you know, and I go back and you go back and forth. Right. yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:20] So now when do you make, when do you add to this list, this pre-production list that you’re going to look at later to?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:24:25] When I’m stuck.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:26] When you’re stuck. That’s when you, that’s when you start adding to it? 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:24:29] Yeah, because once they have, once I, when I have the list and I start getting all my info, I start getting excited. I can’t wait to write that list and, and you know, and explain how, whatever she used burned the lips and how to describe, you know, how the lips or when, whatever. But once I’m, you know, I get to a place where I don’t know, I can’t see it. I can’t visualize anything. I know that I need to, you know, to answer those questions that I’m, whatever it is that I’m missing. It also helps you when you’re revising, you know, you could just, at some point, instead of doing formal revising, you could just go through to find words that repeat themselves too much. It’s a job it will do.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:14] It has to be done.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:25:15] Right. It has to be done and you don’t have to think a lot. Adjective, adjective, adjective, cross it off, you know, or circle it so that you can decide out of 36 adjectives, which 10, is that you’ll keep.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:28] Right. How many justs you’ll keep. Because I have so many justs on everything.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:25:32] Yeah. Like bite-sized tasks that will keep you working, writing will save you time from feeling like a failure, because you’re not writing. You are writing you just not writing, writing. You can touch it, you just not, you know, writing sentences. But you’re writing, you are creating the world of your novel and what happens in it. And you keep giving it texture.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:56] You’ve just given me this huge piece of writing that I’ve never used this big tool that I have never picked up before. And I love it. And I know that listeners are going, Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought about it that way.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:06] I hope so, I hope so. I mean, when you think about it, what it allows you to do is to use up, to be more productive, right? 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:15] Yeah. Yeah

Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:16] You are able to use your uptime and your downtime, your focus time and your unfocused time.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:22] Yeah.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:26:23] Your interrupted time, and your not interrupted time, and stay in it because what do you know of anything worse than having a lot of bass pass without getting back to it and then having to reread everything from scratch because you forgot, you’re not, you’re out of it. You have to get back into it. Right. And it’s okay when you have five pages, but when you have a hundred, you know, it’s time that you’re wasting, it’s not gonna make your book any better. So stay, stay in your novels, stay in it, stay in it as much as you can, even if it’s just thinking of it as you’re, as you’re cooking, thinking. And thinking about the character, just thinking even, 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:05] And what would I rather be doing? Like, you know, Googling something that’s super interesting that I can use in the book or looking at Twitter for the 400th hour that-

Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:12] And sometimes, right, and sometimes what you’re looking for and, I mean, I’ll confess to this, but, dear God, you want something mindless to do. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:23] Exactly. That’s why we scroll Twitter. That’s why we look at Facebook. Yeah.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:27] Right. So you, you are there and you say, Oh my God, I’m so tired. I just had 10 calls, 2 zooms and whatever. You know what? I’m going to browse the sale. I’m going to browse Twitter. I’m going to look at houses that I will never buy I’m and you’re doing something mindless. You could do something mindless that nevertheless could be useful later.  

Rachael Herron: [00:27:51] I feel like you may have just changed my life and that doesn’t not always happen on this show.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:27:53] Your new game.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:57] This is my new game! And I am starting a book pretty soon so this is like so incredibly exciting. I think that must, that must satisfy the craft tip question that I was going to ask you about unless you have something else.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:28:10] No. I mean, it’s, it’s basically what I’ve taught it. I can’t tell you students just look at me, you know, when I walk in with magazines and scissors and when I did the sort of okay. There, there is another part of it, right? Obviously, you’re trying to build a, what happens next and why by causal effects. And all of those things and so, yeah, there’s, there’s more to it but they are pretty, pretty excited about being able to build the world before, you know, having to think of everything as if it were magical

Rachael Herron: [00:28:46] Yeah. It doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Yeah. Let me ask you what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:28:56] Well, it’s not surprising to me. I have grown daughters and when they are unhappy, I know they’re unhappy. They broke up with the boyfriend or they fought with the husband, or they’re not getting along with their mom-in-law or, you know, or they lost a job or they lost a friend, it just consumes me.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:16] Really?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:19:17] And I’m saying, and I’m pretty hands off. I mean, one of my daughters, my eldest daughter lives in New York. She just got married. And, in November, I love my son-in-law, but things that affect her life, affect me. She had an issue with a lawyer, that, you know, basically was trying to cheat her like a month ago. And I couldn’t think about anything else. I was like, I’m going to run an email and you do this and you go that and call the bar and I get completely sucked into solving it now. And I cannot, I cannot just, you know, until they’ve told me that they sold it on their own or, you know, or they ask for help so I can do it for them. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:02] How does that, how does that mama bear energy translate into your work?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:08] Exhausting. It’s exhausting. I don’t know that it does. I really don’t. Most of my, my protagonist and I’m going into, you know, long-form novel. They’re childless. All three of them are childless.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:23] God, that’s hilarious. And I have no kids and I’m obsessed with the mother-daughter connection. All of my books are about moms and daughters. So that is so,

Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:31] Lord. I, you know, I think that’s why they’re all childless. I’m excited about that other,

Rachael Herron: [00:30:38] So simple.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:39] That other part that just, you know, it’s, it’s crazy, you know, that once somebody else is born, it’s not up to you to be happy anymore. They will be able to determine whether you can be happy forever. That’s terrifying. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:55] I could tell from here that you are an amazing mother.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:30:56] Oh, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:58] You love your girls so much.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:00] I try, I try. I have amazing girls. They are amazing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:05] Okay. So what is the best book you’ve read recently and why you love it?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:10] I love; I love to talk about that. Okay. Well, I’m still reading this one, but I’m enjoying it very much. So this is, I think it just came out yesterday. This is “The Boy in The Field” by Margot Livesey. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:25] It’s a beautiful cover. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:26] Oh my goodness. All her covers are really good. I’d never met her, but I love her. I tweet at her all the time. She just, her sentences are lyrical, but also they drive. They go places, they don’t have to go under, you know, in the beauty of whatever. She can write a really poetic sentence that doesn’t take you out of the story. And for me, that’s high praise. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:54] Absolutely. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:31:55] You know? So she’s really good. And she’s got a really good plotter, I find. A really good plotter. So this one, for example, there’s a mystery in it. And I am, I think I made less than 50 pages from finishing and I don’t know the answer. I don’t know. I don’t know what happens. Okay. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:15] Also very high praise. When a writer can’t figure it out, that’s amazing. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:19] Thank you, right? Because it’s not a one dimensional plot where I can see it coming right now and also she’s not like rattling off suspects. I had to read up. And after a while I said, wait a minute, this could be a suspect. That could be a suspect. Anyway, then, this, I, I, I actually reviewed them. I don’t know either the writer or the translator. So Nona Fernandez is a Chilean writer. Look at the thinness of this novel. I think some things, very short pages, 70 something.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:54] And this is a novel? It’s not poetry?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:56] This is a novel.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:57] Wow. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:32:58] It’s a novel about the Chilean dictatorship and when I finished, I was complete. I said, Holy cow, I get it. I get it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:07] And what’s, and what’s it called again?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:08] “Cool Space Invaders”, both in English and Spanish. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:11] Okay

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:12] Now the first time I read it, I read it in English. It was translated by Natasha Wimmer who, who has translated many- she was Bolaños’s translator. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:23] Oh, wow. Okay. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:24] So she knows something about translating dense things and making them, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:28] Yeah. It’s an art. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:29] Accessible, but, oh my goodness. I mean, I read this first and I said nah, she must’ve rewritten it because there’s no way she captured all that lyricism translating from Spanish to English, you know, with the dramatic roots and all of that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:42] Yes

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:43] So that’s why I have to buy the Spanish. She did. She did capture it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:47] I’m not thinking about it. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:33:48] And I’m one of those people who like, well, you know, we’ll be watching something on Netflix and going, translation. It just, it just bothers me so much. When something is translated to English and that’s not what they meant at all, or the other way around English to Spanish, you know, like a formal (word in Spanish), which would really be a formal lawyer. And what they hadn’t meant to say was a former lawyer, not formal. I have issues. And this one, this is a perfect translation. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. It’s about, it’s a story of a bunch of kids who are children in the same classroom when the dictatorship took hold. And one of their classmates is the daughter of a military guy and she disappears one day. And so they’re piecing together what they know.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:46] Don’t tell me how much more cause I have to read it.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:34:49] You will know, but, but it’s just, it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. I actually wish I had marked like a paragraph to read you. So you could hear the music of the, of the, of it. And then lastly, and this one, I’m just, I’m just discovering. This is like “El Salas Rivera”, “While They Sleep, Under The Bed is Another Country”. She’s Puerto Rican like me and she’s, you know, she’s writing about colonization and she’s writing about lack of identity and she’s writing about Puerto Rico. Look at these pages. She’s just kind of going at overheard pieces from people after Maria and just kind of tracing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:30] So there’s a lot of white space.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:35:32] of overheard prayers, and then it’s all sort of comes together and, you know, in a, in a longer prose poem or lyric essay, but by the time you get to that, to that lyric essay, all those little layers have just gotten inside you and so it’s just so much more powerful.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:52] I’m going to put all of these in the show notes for everyone.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:35:53] This is an amazing, amazing book. I haven’t told her, I don’t know her personally, but I know her on Twitter and you know I, you know I’m loving the book before she does, so

Rachael Herron: [00:36:04] That’s so exciting.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:05] Anyway, I’m a big reader. I read almost a hundred books a year. I, I, I 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:11] I was a big reader. I think I only do like 60 or so.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:14] I read, I read every two, three days. I’m on the next book. I just, I read a lot to fall asleep. And I read a lot because it just keeps me so, so there, 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:25] it keeps us in the water. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:26] Yeah. And then what I did to sort of keep myself at that pace. I reviewed books for the New York journal of books. Last year I reviewed 50 books. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:36] Holy cow, Anjanette. That is fancy too.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:38] I know, I know, but it’s so great because you have a deadline and you’re, you know, you get into the books and you read deeply, deeper then sometimes we do, when we can just put it off, you know. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:51] Right. Right, right, right, right. And you get boxes of free books all the time. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:36:55] There you go. Win-win.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:59] Tell, tell the listeners where we can find you and tell them about your most recent book.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:37:05] Well, my most recent book, I’m hoping it will sell. So I’ve written three novels, two of which you mentioned, and the third, which my, my agent is selling part of what it has and that’s interesting. I’ll just mention it very quickly, but it’s such a, it’s become such a big thing. My first book was, quite frankly, what they call Chiclet was a woman’s story. It was a little lighter in the sense that it didn’t deal with no big things. It dealt with love battles. It wasn’t exactly a romance. I remember that the blurbs read smart chicklet as it books were, women were done. What happened? This one happened to be smart. We need to point that out. Smart Chiclet. Yeah and the second one was I was compared to Charlene Harris. And at the time I hadn’t read publisher’s weekly compared Clairvoyant to Charlene Harris, which I hadn’t, I hadn’t read. And I, you know, when I looked and said, why and I said, what are they, what does that mean? They’re comparing me to what you know, to a white book.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:08] Correct

Anjanette Delgado: [00:38:09] Later, I was very, very honored and flattered.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:12] Yeah. Those are great books. It’s so fun.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:38:14] Oh my God. I read all. But then I decided as I changed as I went on conferences, and I said, as I started, you know, leaving behind my, my life as a journalist and becoming more of a, of a full time writer, if you will, I realized that I had changed that where I sold my books may not be the best places going forward because I am not necessarily just a commercial writer anymore. And so that necessitated a lot of time in transitioning. And even now, I think that, you know, a lot of it’s a lot of learning, to sell a literary novel that’s nevertheless, has cannibals and it’s about hunger and death and there’s a mystery and all of that, but it’s the language has it. It’s different. 

Rachael Herron: [00:39:00] Yeah, of course. 

Anjanette Delgado: [00:39:01] So, people can find me anywhere that books are sold. Honestly, my website, which is just my name, very easy. I’m all over social media. I regularly write columns and op-eds on social justice. Yeah, once in a while I get so upset, it needs that that needs to, you know, leave the body.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:23] That’s one of our jobs as writers is to work for social justice and we have this particular tool that not a lot of people have.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:39:30] I should be surprised. I’ve been surprised at how much it has helped all my other writing to pan an op-ed. And, you know, people think an op-ed is just writing what you think. But it’s really testing yourself, testing what you think, finding the arguments, finding the factual arguments to support your thesis, you write your feeling, and that brings about a process of, of thought of claiming your own feelings and, and telling yourself whether they’re, you know, they pass muster or not that I find enlightening and, you know, just, just a great release. So I, I’m doing that so they’ll find a day if they, they’ll find me talking about Latino issues, racial issues, feminist issues. 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:17] I’m going to follow you immediately on Twitter, because I’m a twitter head

Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:19] Thank you. Yes, please. And soon in other places where, you know, there’s a new anthology coming out that I’m so excited about first.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:29] What is the anthology based around?

Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:30] It’s a, it’s for University of Florida press and the working title right now is lack of next writers on the politics of belonging. So I’ve tried to create a whole selection on the, on the literature of a rootedness, right, and what that means so, Richard Blanco is in it, Jennine Capó Crucet, who you may know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:53] I’ve heard the name

Anjanette Delgado: [00:40:54] Natrisha Angle, there’s just (Spanish name). And so I was able to get, select the story for this and I’m really excited about that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:01] You’re doing a little bit of everything.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:03] And that’s, remember how you asked the big thing, having all these things that are also important to me, trying to, you know, take away eat away at the purely writing time.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:17] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you’re getting it all done and you are incredibly inspiring.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:24] Thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:25] I have enjoyed this interview so deeply and I love the energy that you bring to this and I’m trying to stay very still because I’m having a microphone thing where it makes a lot of noise, but usually I would just be like doing this all over the screen because I’m so excited to talk to you and meet you. And thank you for doing this show.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:43] Anytime, anytime. Anytime at all.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:45] Oh my gosh. Wait, I’m going to claim you as a friend now, so you can’t get rid of me.

Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:48] Of course.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:50] Thank you Anjanette. Happy writing

Anjanette Delgado: [00:41:53] Thank you and thank you to your listeners.

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.

Bonus mini-episode, brought to you by my Patrons at the $5+ levels! 

Including: 

• Will I lose the humor in my dark comedy if I move to thriller? 
• How should I sensitively write dialect? 
• How can I know when I’m overcomplicating my book? 

Join now! http://patreon.com/rachael

Transcript

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

 [00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 201 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad you’re here today for this mini episode in which I will be answering the questions from patrons, like you, who subscribed at the $5 a month and up level, you get to use me for all of your questions, whatever they are.

[00:00:36] So let’s jump into it. I’ve got a couple of longer questions from Johanna here and I’m really excited to answer them. So, the first one is, I am about to embark on the sixth draft of my novel Social Debt, which is a contemporary dark comedy, about a snarky barmaid who has to find out how long she can stay dead on the internet when she’s alive in real life. Aside to say, I want to read this when it comes out, because that is such a great premise. I love it. Okay. Going on. I’m part of a writer’s group and have also had recently had two really helpful one-on-ones with agents. A common piece of feedback I’ve had is that some of the action in the book felt too out of place, too horrific and strong to be in what is essentially a comic story, albeit a dark one, having resisted this at first, I am now in agreement and as such, I’ve been doing some rethinking and reworking of my plot. I’ve come up with a new storyline, but before I get to the long business of rewriting, I’m hoping for a second opinion or about whether this new plot has overcome the problem of essentially trying to squash two genres into a book or have I now in fact, just crossed over into a straight thriller. So Johanna sent me her two different ideas, the way it was and the way she’s thinking about doing it.

[00:01:55] And I won’t go into those because that is her book and we talked about it a little bit on email. However, my- the reason I’m reading this on air is that my opinion is, Johanna that you could not possibly write a straight thriller without the comic snarky darkness. And I don’t think you have to worry about that. Yes, you are writing something darker and more horrifying. Because, and I was just talking about this with somebody yesterday, when we introduce a terrible element, a dark, terrible element, the reader has to be prepared for that. We make a social contract with them when we start our books, if we are writing light, bright, light, bright, funny, funny, funny, funny. And then at the dark moment, there is a horrific murder, and there has been no evidence or thought of violence before this, the reader is going to be mighty put out. And that’s why thrillers worked so well. We’re kind of gearing them up the whole way through. It’s getting darker and darker and more and more fraught with tension. It sounds like you are going towards the more fraught with tension, which I think works really well for what you were talking about. However, you are such an automatically funny person who thinks in a funny way, and I am cheerfully jealous of that. I wish that I could do that. I think in a funny way, and I think in a dark way, and they don’t often overlap and I wish they did.

[00:03:23] I think that is a really wonderful superpower that you have. So no matter what, you are not going to cross over into a straight thriller, and I just wanted to reassure you about that. No matter what thriller you write, no matter how dark it is, it would still be darkly comedic. So embrace that hold onto it and absolutely lean into exactly that. So there are some more questions here. And she says, okay, so I’m feeling a bit paralyzed at the moment with the book as I have this big decision to make about which way to take the plot as per my original question. I’ve been fiddling about with early chapters and doing some research to help with one of the main characters, but I’m hesitant to get going properly on the next draft without making a decision, but it feels hard to decide without having done some writing.

[00:04:13] I know you said in your how to revise a novel webinar, that you should always do rewrites in order, but I wondered what you might think of writing a rough draft of a chapter from the middle, ie: one of the key scenes that would change to see how it feels. And if it seems promising, going back to those early chapters and working forward again until I reached that new chapter. I suspect the answer will be yes, go for it as the rules are, but there are no rules, but I thought it might be something too interesting to discuss on the podcast. Big things here. The rules are, there are no rules. However, there are very strong suggestions and in revision, one of my strong, very, very strong suggestions, is to not go back and re-revise during a draft. What happens if we do that as we get there is potential, there’s great potential. I see it happen hundreds of times that people go back to re-revise to try to make it exactly perfect with this new direction they’re taking it in and they never get out of that whirlpool because they don’t quite make it into what they want on that attempt. So then they start second guessing what they were trying to do. So they try to come up with a better new idea and then go back to those chapters and re-revise them again. But it’s not perfect because nothing is ever perfect. So they try to come up with a better idea again and I say this from not only watching many students do this, but from doing it myself.

[00:05:47] And that is why I believe in the multiple passes of revision from beginning to end and every time you get a great brand new idea, if no one’s ever heard me say this, well, listen up. If you’re moving through your book through a revision and you- you’re moving forward, always forward, you have a great idea that you wish you would have done and that you would like to try, make a post-it about it. That’s a great new idea, make a post-it, keep it with all your other posts-it of your great ideas that you’re reading all the time to refresh your memory about what’s there and then make yourself a note in the manuscript. I like to use all caps so I remember what I’m doing and I say, gosh, I wish I had done this in the last three chapters, I am moving forward from here as if I did. Then I know where I started and I pretend that I’ve already revised those chapters. What it means is that if this idea doesn’t work, I don’t have to go back and undo all the work I did. If I’d gone backwards to fix it. And I keep moving forward and I have a post-it, just there waiting for me that I will go in on the next draft and fix quickly all the way up to the point where I made the decision to move forward as if I had already done all the work behind it. If you have to listen to that again, to make sense of it, I don’t blame you, but it works. And Johanna, I already have very, very high hopes for you. And I know that you can do this because I think you said you’re on your sixth draft. Is that right? That already means that you know how to go through a draft and you know how to complete one.

[00:07:19] So to have a great idea, start where you are and start working with it and moving forward to the end. Means that you’re already confident that you will go back and do the seventh draft and catch yourself up to that idea that you had. I would encourage you trying that again, not a rule, but in my experience, this is a way that gets people through drafts faster. With more confidence. You’re actually moving forward with less clarity, which is okay. But it gets you to clarity faster by actually trying it and not going back and back and back and trying to fix it and I will also say people who are not in revision. This is how I write first drafts. I write a first draft, I have a great new idea, it changes the entire book. I pretend that the book has rewritten that way up until now I make a post-it, I make a note in the manuscript where I start a fresh as if everything behind me is perfect in the way that I want it to be now. And I move forward and that is how I get to the end of a crappy first draft. It means that I am Frankenstein creating a monster and nothing fits together. And there’s arms coming out of the eyebrow and legs sprouting out of the rib cage. And that’s all fixable. That’s actually really, really fun to fix. So that is what I suggest. Okay. 

[00:08:35] So another question from Johanna, and actually, as I write another question occurs to me. I currently have two characters in the book who have accents, at least traces of accents, which are not mine. So I’m just going to skim ahead here. We have a new castle Jordy accent the Jordy only comes out when he’s angry. Which given who he is fairly often and then there’s another character who is British Jamaican. Parents were Jamaican and came to English and came to England on the wind rush. This character was brought up in South London and he tosses around a lot of British Jamaican slang. So that was a paraphrase. Now, going back, what is your opinion of writers trying to write in dialects that aren’t theirs?

[00:09:15] I’ve done various bits of research, watching YouTube clips and TV shows or listening to audio books where people have those accents or use that sign. And sometimes I think it’s working well, other times I think I’m kidding myself and should just another way to make these voices distinct. Plus, of course, there’s the delicate issue of trying to write a book, which is truly representative of multicultural London, whilst- I just like, I just like the fact that I got to say whilst; whilst also not committing cultural appropriation. What are your thoughts and or tips? Fantastic question. And a very important question. And there’s a very simple solution that many, many authors use and I subscribed to it and basically it goes like this.

[00:09:57] When those characters are introduced, let us hear their accent in one or two sentences, and then remind us of that accent, every two to three chapters with a word or two. If you introduce the characters to us with the accent using, you know, the apostrophe to show dropped vowels or alternate spellings to show different pronunciations, we will remember those characters and our reader’s brains can hold. That this guy always speaks in a Jordy accent. I don’t even know if I’m saying the word Jordy, right? Honestly. But this person will have the Jordy accent. This person will have the British Jamaican slang and an accent. We will remember that. And then you don’t have to do the hard work of trying to put it into a phonetic dialect, which can be offensive, which can read as offensive. Also it can tire out the reader. We get tired of deciphering transcribed, dialects. The brain just doesn’t want to do it. So show it to us and then hint at it with one or two words. Every two to three chapters, I think is a good ratio. So the reader is re-reminded, but otherwise just write in straight up anglicized English and the reader will imbue that accent in their own head when they’re reading and you don’t risk offending anybody by doing it wrong. Make sure that those first sentences are really good, strong, and non-offensive random via sensitivity reader. If you’re not British Jamaican that is what I meant, but then otherwise let your reader do all the work. So you don’t have to, it’s a, it’s a wonderful answer and it works really, really well. 

[00:11:43] So I think that that is all your questions. So I’m going to scoot over and we’ve got one more question from Mel. Thank you for this, Mel. I’m getting questions from all over. I’ve gone from the UK. Now I’m going down to New Zealand. Where is the line between over-complicating things in a story and adding depth, richness, and good complexity? This makes an assumption that the latter is a good thing and adds value to the reader experience asking myself this question can occur in outlining drafting or in revision stages or all three. Oh yes. I love this question. So where’s the line between over-complicating and adding depth, richness and good complexity. So you are correct. The depth, the richness, and the good complexity is something that people love. Not all writers write with it. Not all writers have to write with it. However, if you’re drawn to writing with it, then you love it. And it should be in your books. That line between over-complicating though, and adding richness is something that is so easily blurred and stepped over. Especially in our first few books, there tends to be this thing that happens where we panic a little bit, that perhaps our conflict isn’t as conflicting as we would like it to be. So we think about throwing in a little twist or a surprise or a plot point that we didn’t see coming or, a thematic element that hasn’t been in this book before in order to bolster it, to make it stronger. And this is where the danger lies. I did this, I know in my second through fourth or fifth book, I know this because my editor and my agent would always send my books back to me saying, you know, take out some plot, take out some plot, take out some plot.

[00:13:29] You have too many things going on. While books can hold a whole hell of a lot, the book still has to be cohesive. It needs to cohere to this theme that you have in your book. If you are writing a first draft or even a second draft, and you don’t know what your theme is yet, that’s fine. It will come. But at some point you need to know what your theme is and what you’re actually arguing for in this book. And that includes novels that especially includes novels. You, no one wants to write or read a book that is about the power of the mother-daughter relationship plus the right for all men to bear arms plus the idea that war is a mockery of the gods plus define- exploring true communication and compatibility between people who are very different. You are doing too much with this book now, and those are the books I kind of, I used to write, I would put in a little dash of everything, hoping that the conflict then would seem richer because I had so much going on.

[00:14:45] But really what I wanted to tell was the story of a person finding her chosen family. And that is a story that I come back to over and over again. And I can’t throw in all of those other things I can throw in touches of things, but it can’t be the main point. So, but I’ll pull back on that and, and say, if you’re writing a first draft, throw in everything. Throw in the proverbial kitchen sink. You don’t know what’s going to stick and you don’t know what this book wants to be yet. So don’t hold back in the first draft. Just know that in that big, huge revision, the second draft where you pull your book apart and put it back together again, which is necessary for every good book. That’s the point at which you’re going to say, gosh, I was trying to do a little bit too much here and I was hoping I would get away with it and we never get away with it, people. Whenever I try to get away with something in a book, that is what the editor always points out and says, Oh, you don’t get to get away with that.

[00:15:43] And I would like to also say to everyone listening, you will have an editor. You will have an editor at some point, whether. You go the traditional route and you find an agent who then sells your book to an editor, and then that person will edit your book and help you make it as strong as it can be. Or if you hire an editor, I recommend through Reedsy.com. Because I have great editors there, in order to sell, publish, your editor will be helping you with a lot of these things. So there is this difficulty, Mel, and I know you might be feeling it that how can I tell when I’m stepping over that line of over-complicating versus adding depth. Sometimes we can’t tell. Sometimes, especially in our first few books, we need somebody else to say, all right, this is all beautiful and organically fits together. And where did this come from? This is a spear, you just tried to stick into a blender. And those two things don’t go together. But now the images in my mind and I’m enjoying it, and that’s what an editor’s for. And you’ll all have an editor. As you move forward. So trust in that, it’s nice to let the editor do her job.

[00:16:51] She has a job. You don’t want to hand her a perfect book. No one’s ever done that in the history of the world. So play card, do the best you can. None of us are writing perfect books. There’s no such thing as a perfect book, especially before an editor has seen it. So take heart. You’re doing exactly right. I love that you asked the question. And, all of you, thank you for listening. Or watching this mini episode, I really enjoy doing them. Please, if you are a patron at the $5, and up level, I run out of questions. This is all I have. This is why I haven’t done them in a while because I’ve been trying to save them. You all, aren’t utilizing me enough. Give me some more, throw me a challenge. I would love to have a question where I just say, I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at saying, I don’t know. And I would probably do some Googling, but, I’m also pretty good at saying, I didn’t know. So, or, and I’m also very good at saying that is beyond my capabilities. So don’t throw like legal questions at me or tax questions. I’m not gonna answer those, everything else, lay it on me. Thank you so much for listening. I really, really appreciate your patronage and I appreciate every single listener here. I hope that you are doing well and that you are happy and safe and that you are getting some of your own writing down. Okay. We’ll talk soon.

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

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

Edward Giordano is a Science Fiction & Fantasy author, podcaster, curler, off-key singer, pop music lover and avid Big Brother fan. The aim of his fiction is inclusiveness and exploring ideas that have remained unchallenged. Ed lives in Oakland with his boyfriend and their cat, Ripley. When he isn’t watching curling bonspiels on YouTube or obsessively listening to podcasts, he is desperately trying to scavenge words together for his next fiction project.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. My friend Edward Giordano. Hello Ed!

Edward Giordano: [00:00:23] Hey Rachael. I’m so excited to be here. It’s an honor and a privilege. And I thank you for inviting me for episode 200, like such a big milestone. 

Rachael Herron: [00:00:33] We are celebrating episode 200 together, which feels really right, because you are my assistant and also you were my friend first and now you’re my assistant and I am calling this the Edisode. This is Edisode 200. 

Edward Giordano: [00:00:49] Edisode 200, that’s so fun. 

Rachael Herron: [00:00:50] That is so yes. Let me give you a little bit of bio for those of you who haven’t heard me wax rhapsodic about you. Edward Giordano is a science fiction and fantasy author, podcaster, curler, dude, I didn’t know you curled, I love curling. Off-key singer, pop music lover and avid Big Brother fan. The aim of his fiction is inclusiveness and exploring ideas that have remained unchallenged. Ed lives in Oakland with his boyfriend and their cat Ripley. When he isn’t watching curling bonspiels, is that how you say it? 

Edward Giordano: [00:01:18] Yes. Bonspiels. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:01:19] Bonspiels on YouTube or obsessively listening to podcast, he is desperately trying to scavenge words together for his next fiction project. I know that all of that is true

Edward Giordano: [00:01:29] Yeah. It’s like the, well, I mean, this is my bio, so it’s very, it’s very Ed, that bio.  

Rachael Herron: [00:01:34] It’s very Ed, but I didn’t know about the curling. I’ve only been once a couple of years ago and it was that, gosh, darn most fun.

Edward Giordano: [00:01:39] Did you play or did you watched? 

Rachael Herron: [00:01:40] Played.

Edward Giordano: [00:01:41] You played, nice. 

Rachael Herron: [00:01:42] Played. Yes, it was a Christmas holiday party for Lala’s work. 

Edward Giordano: [00:01:46] Oh, that’s so awesome. 

Rachael Herron: [00:01:47] I played in Oakland at the rank and-

Edward Giordano: [00:01:49] That’s where I used to play. 

Rachael Herron: [00:01:50] Oh my gosh. It was so fun.

Edward Giordano: [00:01:52] I love curling. Curling is in like two sentences

Rachael Herron: [00:01:55] Yes

Edward Giordano: [00:01:52] People are like people, like hate, hate on curly. Cause like, oh, it looks boring. Okay. Things that are good about curling, it’s like chess on ice. That’s number one, and number two, unlike football and basketball and baseball, where innings last variable amounts of time and you have no idea how long anything’s gonna last. The 10 ends of curling, lasts the exact same amount of time, whether the first 10^th or the 10th end and you know what, I’m- I like really like that reliability, like-

Rachael Herron: [00:02:29] I love that I hadn’t actually thought about that. That’s so true. 

Edward Giordano: [00:02:31] Yeah. Yeah. It’s- it’s, it’s up and coming 

Rachael Herron: [00:02:35] Also, you get to wear a sweater. Like I am the biggest knitter you know, probably, and like, I don’t get to wear my sweaters in California, but if you cur- let’s go curling sometime. Can we do that? 

Edward Giordano: [00:02:45] Oh, I would love to go curling, the Bay area, curling club is currently building a dedicated curling rink.

Rachael Herron: [00:02:54] I was. I heard that. Oh my goodness

Edward Giordano: [00:02:55] So it’s going to be super exciting. So I can’t, I can’t wait. 

Rachael Herron: [00:02:59] The writers listening, you’re like, what? But I will tell everybody listening. This is Ed. Ed, this is said with all the love of my heart and as a person who sees you and appreciates you, you are the biggest weirdo, in the best, most flagrantly intelligent. May I say genius ways. Like you get obsessed with strange things and then bring them to life. In a particular way. Have you been told that your whole life? 

Edward Giordano: [00:03:28] I have been told I’m a bit odd, but certainly, I think, I think it stems from like, I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, I just believe in pleasures, 

Rachael Herron: [00:03:38] I love that

Edward Giordano: [00:03:39] So it, that’s where, that’s where it all begins from and yeah, I just, I love what I love and I’m unashamed about it, period. 

Rachael Herron: [00:03:47] You know your stuff, you know and you have that mind like a steel trap with mine is a sieve. Like once you hear something, you seem to retain it. 

Edward Giordano: [00:03:57] I tried to both retain it and apply it to my life 

Rachael Herron: [00:04:00] That’s so amazing. 

Edward Giordano: [00:04:01] I try. There’s a, there’s a, there’s an emphasis on the word try. I don’t always succeed, but it’s an attempt. 

Rachael Herron: [00:04:07] Okay. So listeners, I want to take you back in my friendship with Ed. I think we first met at City Art, City Arts and Lectures, and it was one of those amazing moments when somebody comes up to you as a writer and say, are you Rachael Heron? You know? I was like, Oh yes, I am. And you had been listening to my podcast, and then we went out to breakfast with another friend of ours named Rachel, who’s a friend of yours and, and we formed this friendship and every time we would go out, you would say to me, 15 genius things I should be doing with my business. And I would say 15 times, Oh my gosh. I wish I could do that. I wish I had the time to do that. I wish I knew how to do that. And because you, you have the, one of the widest knowledge bases, I know of the publishing industry, especially indie publishing, you just get it. You’ve listened to everything, you know, everything. And so there was a time it was about a year, no six months ago? That you lost your job.

Edward Giordano: [00:05:01] I was- it was October of last year. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:04] Oh my God. So almost a year, 

Edward Giordano: [00:05:05] Almost a year, yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:05:07] So, again, in me being an asshole, like we were out at breakfast and he said, you know, I just lost my job yesterday. And I said, I think I managed to say, I’m so sorry. Will you work for me?

Edward Giordano: [00:05:20] Rachael, I just have to, I have to be so honest. Like you, like the day before I lost my job in a swirl of circumstances that, still sort of haunt my nightmares, but yeah, but beyond, the fact that the next day we had this lunch planned or this brunch planned, and you offered me a job to be your assistant, it’ll like, it like made everything feel right. And like that I, I can’t overstate that enough like that it was so I, I love, I love working for you and I hope I’ve been, I hope, I hope I provide you more data than you’ve ever dreamed of having 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:01] I have so much data about my sales and about the ads that you get me. You are the BookBub whisperer. I have had, is it eight now? Is this my seventh, or eight?

Edward Giordano: [00:06:10] Seventh. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:12] Seven BookBub’s since you started working for me, you just, I don’t know, what

Edward Giordano: [00:06:15] Well, I’m pretty tenacious, like pre- I’m pretty damn tenacious and I feel like I have a hidden dialogue with the BookBub people. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:12] I do too

Edward Giordano: [00:06:15] I’m like, I know what you want. I could tell and you’re gonna give it to me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:29] You caress their brows as they’re falling and they say, okay, Ed, but the one thing and, and, and, and folks right now, Ed has enough roster. He has enough clientele. So unless you want to woo him away from me, which you can try, I’m not trying to pimp them out right now. But I will say that like, as this is a mutual admiration society right now, like you help me sleep better at night because you have helped me do the things that I always wanted to do. And what you have done is what we talk about in the indie world, as everybody wants to do, which is making more products out of the products that you have. Like you, you nag me until I get you what you want, and it usually takes a lot longer than you wanted to. Like, for example, right now, so for a fast draft your memoir, you are getting ready to produce a workbook for me. All I have to do is come up with questions and I haven’t done that yet, but after that you handle the rest of it. You there, and this is why I didn’t have an assistant for so long. I tried several times. I tried people that I liked, you know, hiring virtually and I never felt that level of trust, where I would just like give them the keys to all of the kingdoms. Like you could move to Baja right now on, you know, selling things, getting, as you probably have the passwords to my bank account, you have the passwords to everything. You upload my books, you change everything and I trust you completely. And

Edward Giordano: [00:07:56] I appreciate that so much

Rachael Herron: [00:07:58] You helped me so much. You really, really do because I’m not good at this kind of thing. So the fact that you helped me is amazing. Plus, I want some help with Facebook ads soon. 

Edward Giordano: [00:08:08] Thank you. Well, I hope. Yeah. I, what I, what I tried to do in my head is like clear off your plate. Cause it seems like there’s like all the silly busy work that I actually don’t mind. Cause I, cause that’s like my podcast music listening time

Rachael Herron: [00:08:25] Oh really? That’s awesome

Edward Giordano: [00:08:27] So I don’t, I actually don’t mind this busy work cause it’s like, it’s- it’s like enter the d-

Rachael Herron: [00:08:32] Yeah, it’s clicking and

Edward Giordano: [00:08:32] Moving, dragging, and updating and uploading and waiting and praying and all that, all the sort of things. And you, yeah, so it’s I actually don’t mind it. I, I find that I, I’m not, I can’t be on 16 hours a day mentally. I actually,

Rachael Herron: [00:08:32] No, I can’t. Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:08:32] I actually very much require like, I call it cultural absorption time.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:32] I love that.

Edward Giordano: [00:08:32] It’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like a bad, or it’s like a, it’s like a rebranding of bingeing or just like, just like, Oh, I’m not, I’m not listening to this album or watching an entire season of TV this weekend. I’m culturally absorbing right now, 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:15] which is so important to us as, as writers and artists like no lie. It is one of those things. I think, I, I think I told you that, you know, I have this guilty. I know it’s not a guilty pleasure cause there are no guilty pleasures, but I will watch a Real Housewife, I really will and Lala was reading the next book, Hush Little Baby and it’s set in LA and I like Beverly Hills; Real Housewives. And she said to me, I can see them in there. And I’m like, I know I have been telling you it’s research. 

Edward Giordano: [00:09:42] That’s awesome. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:43] But you just have such a, you have a beautiful way of living life and you have a beautiful, you’re just, you’re just a beautiful person. And I’m really, really thankful that you’re in my life

Edward Giordano: [00:09:50] As to you, you’re a beautiful person.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:53] And we worked so well together. Like I don’t, I can’t even imagine us having an argument, besides

Edward Giordano: [00:09:59] Not yet. Not yet

Rachael Herron: [00:10:00] You’re always right. You are always right.

Edward Giordano: [00:10:02] I’m not always right. I’m not always right. Sometimes. Well, I’m not I’m, I’m not, I mean, I’m not gonna say that I’m wrong, but I’m gonna say that it’s I’m I might be wrong for what you want to do with yourself, with your career

Rachael Herron: [00:10:15] You’re an idea generation machine and you do, you- you’re like one of those tennis ball machines. It’s just like wah, wah, wah, wah. And I go, that’s a good one. Not for me. Not for me. Not for me. Yes. I can’t believe I never thought of that. You know? So that’s amazing. So, but let’s talk about you and your writing, your writing. That is what is important to us. And your first book came out this year. Congratulations! We’re going to deviate from the normal questions cause it’s just you and me here. What was that like? What was it like having your first book out with that incredible cover? 

Edward Giordano: [00:10:48] Well I have one in case 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:52] Good. It’s so gorgeous. Ghostly Chords

Edward Giordano: [00:10:55] Ghostly Chords, covered by the amazing Tom, Tommy Arnold, who was on your podcast episode.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:01] That was a great episode

Edward Giordano: [00:11:03] Yeah. I insisted that he had to come on. It’s like, like his podcast, like well, you, what you realize in that episode, what people do with painting and with drawing is what writers do with writing. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:15] All the same

Edward Giordano: [00:11:16] And I just wanted to bring that to light. What was that like? Well, it was first off, it was super amazing. I know so many people want to write a book. And don’t actually put one out. So I’m glad I was able to do it and something that didn’t quite, I guess in my head, I was like, Oh, I have this super stupendous cover. People say that the book is good. Which is great, but it

Rachael Herron: [00:11:43] It is good. Lovely.

Edward Giordano: [00:11:44] but it, novellas are damn hard to sell.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:49] Yeah. How many words is it? Was it 30, 25,000?

Edward Giordano: [00:11:53] it’s 23-ish 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:54] Okay

Edward Giordano: [00:11:55] 23,000 and I don’t begrudge me with that length because I find, okay, funny story. I try to write two short stories, real this year and they both ended up being one, a novelette and one in novella. I’m like, like the novella length is like, such a perfect television episode length of story. And I feel like all my years of television viewing has internalized that, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:23] Absolutely

Edward Giordano: [00:12:24] like that like length of thing manuscripts, and I just, I just need to start accepting that I need to be a bit like releasing a novella at 29. Yes, the big publishers are doing it. I’m looking at Thor, I’m looking at Dawn, like, yeah, the big publishers can pull that off and they can sometimes work, but even they run into the situation where they have this sort of bundling novellas together to make it work. So it’s, it’s, it’s like a beautiful length. And one of the most successful novellas of all time is, A Christmas, the, one where Scrooge is, introduced all the ghosts.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:05] A Christmas Story? 

Edward Giordano: [00:13:06] It’s like a Christmas Story-

Rachael Herron: [00:13:08] I cannot-

Edward Giordano: [00:13:10] It’s like A Christmas Carol!

Rachael Herron: [00:13:11] Christmas Carol

Edward Giordano: [00:13:12] Christmas Carol. That’s like the most famous novella in the world and the most successful and no one talks about that book, like, Oh, it’s a novella I wish it was longer. People did buy it and they read it over and over again, they’d get the audio book. They listened to it every Christmas, that sort of thing. Like I’m like, nothing’s wrong with a novella format except the audience isn’t ready to accept it full-heartedly which is like, and then the, and then the thing I was missing was the people that are really doing successful novellas are people that have novellas that are tie into series. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:45] Which is what you keep trying to talk me into doing 

Edward Giordano: [00:13:48] Which I keep trying to talk Rachael doing, or they’re they have a big marketing push from a big label, or they’re releasing three to four novellas every three months. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:57] Right. Right. 

Edward Giordano: [00:13:58] So it’s, so it’s just a standalone novella. I don’t regret the decision, but it was not the wisest marketing decision, that being said, I, you have to get your feet wet and you gotta, and I still think there’s a lot of potential with it. I’m actually working on a prequel short story. And then post cool short story and I’m going to bundle that

Rachael Herron: [00:13:57] Yes

Edward Giordano: [00:13:58] Into a re-release of ghosted chords so that it’s a, it’s technically a true story novella, short story, but it’s, it’s but it it’ll look like a novel and it could sell it as a novel 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:34] and it- it’ll have the page length and you can call it a collection, which people like, you know, it’s like kind of like a box set. So I think that’s a great idea. I think that’s fabulous.

Edward Giordano: [00:14:41] So, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I learned so much and I feel like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:45] and you’re a published author now, like that,

Edward Giordano: [00:14:46] I’m a published author, there’s like so much you, so much you don’t know until you do it once. So, and I feel like I learned so much more about my writing style like something that I thought I was, I thought it was like, Oh, I’m an outline writer. Like, that’s my, that’s my strength. But then what I discovered in this most recent version and of course this is probably bound to change, but in my current version, I find my setup is I, I, I start with, I just like write my idea out and like, try to sketch out some major plot points and some characters that I’m interested in and then I try to as quickly as possible to find the theme of the story. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:29] A lot of writers don’t do that until revision. And it’s so helpful if you do it ahead of time. 

Edward Giordano: [00:15:33] Yeah. Yes. And then I, and then I have, and by the time I’m done with my brainstorming, I have the beginning and the end of the story. And I know the theme and then I let everything that enter that story, make sure it’s a spoke on the wheel of that theme, connected back to the center and the people who have read the two stories where I, where I kept, where I was like, I knew that theme before I even started writing or basically like barely after a page, then I was like, Oh, then people have been saying like, Oh, like nothing, nothing feels like out of left field because it’s still dealing with the core message of the story. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:12] I kind of think of and not to trivialize it, but I kind of think of theme is like the Instagram filter of our books. Like it, it is, it is the way, it’s the view. It’s the lens with which we view everything that happens inside the book. And can you tell us what the theme of yours is? 

Edward Giordano: [00:16:28] Well, I’ve discovered that for the Ghostly Chords Series, it’s, it’s all about, it’s all about the sister-sister relationship. It’s all about Darren and Glen and how that evolves and then in my new story, it’s all about, it’s all about like nostalgia and wanting to bring it back, but not bring it back in the same way, but bringing it back in a better way. That’s like, that’s the, so I want to give you the premise of my, I’m hoping to release this novella this year. Yes, I do really hope to play release this year. I want to tell you a little about it. It’s, it all came from so I do, I think I’ve told this a little bit to you, but I’ll for the audience’s benefit, I don’t know if you know about the gross michelle banana?

Rachael Herron: [00:17:11] No, but I love this story. Please tell it, I love it

Edward Giordano: [00:17:14] Okay so, the gross michelle banana is a variety of banana that kind of tastes like banana, luffy tuffy 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:21] which is like one of my favorite flavors ever.

Edward Giordano: [00:17:23] And it went almost extinct. You could actually still buy; you could still buy five bananas for $60 from the farmer in Florida. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:33] Oh my God. I thought it was extinct. 

Edward Giordano: [00:17:35] It’s- it’s, it’s almost, it’s very endangered.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:38] So that banana flavor that we enjoyed as children, that was the flavor of that banana?

Edward Giordano: [00:17:42] Yeah. That variety of banana. And then I, there was a musical song was that was like, that’s something that went something to the tune of, there is no bananas at the food stand, something, something

Rachael Herron: [00:17:54] We have no bananas today.

Edward Giordano: [00:17:56] Yeah. We have no bananas. And then that’s, that’s in reference to the gross michelle sweet and like sweet and meaty meat, meat. Maybe meaty’s the right word. Sweet and meaty banana that’s gone extinct or almost exclusively extinct. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:08] Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:18:09] So. So then I was like, okay, how do I use this as a, and this is something that Tommy Arnold talks about on his podcast, Black, White, Gray, is using, real life scenarios and what he actually means by taking it. He means taking a photo and using that to figure out how light works. But I took that to me like, Oh, you use real life scenarios and how would that apply to a different scenario. So, so there was, there was the musical about the bananas in my story, the plums have gone extinct due to an event and there’s- I have like documentaries about the missing plums, like, like real crime documentaries about plums dying and it’s all it all hinges around the main character tried to bring plums back and the memory, the memory that her grandmother told her of the, of what plums tasted like. And then she finally gets a hold of a plum and is disappointed and she’s like, I could recreate this exactly as is, but I should recreate it as the memory I felt when I was told about it would be like, so then yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s super fun. It’s a globetrotting story and takes place in like one, two, three, four, four or five countries. I was like, okay. It was my, it was my way of traveling and COVID-19 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:33] And it’s a story, not a novel. This field, it’s a novel itself too longer

Edward Giordano: [00:19:39] Oh, it could, yeah, it could be longer, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a novella and I think it packs a punch when it, when I, well, when it’s all done and edited, I think it will pack much. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:48] Have you ever had one of those bananas from Florida?

Edward Giordano: [00:19:51] No I’ve not.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:48] We should go. 

Edward Giordano: [00:19:51] The closer I’ve had, the- I was tempted. I was tempted by that. I was 10. I was like $60 for five bananas. That’s okay. I mean, they are endangered. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:06] Okay. So now, what is your process when it comes to writing? When do you get your writing done? Cause I know you have more clients than just me now. So like how difficult is it to get that work done? 

Edward Giordano: [00:20:17] This is- this is the weak part in my story. I tend to write on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is not great. So I wrote with my other friend, Rachel, on Tuesday night, and I write with you on Thursdays. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:31] Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:20:32] And for some reason I did write more pre COVID, but since the pandemic I’ve been just like, I don’t know, I just don’t want to do it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:40] It’s hard

Edward Giordano: [00:20:41] Like I always find a reason not to I’m like, Oh, this is happening or that’s happening. Or I, I didn’t drink enough water today. You know, I didn’t exercise today. Not that that’s different than most other days during the pandemic. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:56] So what is, what, alright, I want to go with my normal questions. What is your favorite part of writing? What is the part that brings you the most joy? 

Edward Giordano: [00:21:08] My favorite part of writing is probably just the excitement I get when I could figure out us like a unique story that no one else will tell. And this is, and this is something that, that I was struggling with. So I’m of two minds, like, okay, so there’s this one mind where you are unique and your story, your stories are a confluence of your life history and what you culturally absorbed in your life and events in your life. So that’s, that’s so you’re the only person that could write that. That’s- that’s the apple one hand, the apple on the other hand is if you write it and you like it, other people will like it, like, hold on. These, these seem like opposite apples like this one’s like, like, yes, you are unique snowflake special. And this one’s like, well, if you write it, other people are going to like it because you like it. So can you, can you help cross a hybrid that divide for me? 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:13] Well, I think that the joy that you put out into the world with that, because you, I mean, every single person listening just got deeply invested in that banana. Right? And they probably hadn’t heard about it before. I don’t think, I think I had heard it mentioned, but I’d never heard it detailed like you had told me about and the way that you’re going to discuss these plums on the page with other people, it’s that, it’s that Stephen King telepathy thing that he talks about. You are creating something and then you are putting it later into somebody else’s mind. And that is beautiful. And if you look back at your bio, that whole idea that you have on inclusion, on bringing everyone into the fold. That’s part of that kind of goes along with those two apples. Right? 

Edward Giordano: [00:22:53] True. True. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:56] Can you, and I didn’t prep you for this cause I thought I told you we were just going to be gabbing, but can you tell us any craft tip that helps you out while you’re writing?

Edward Giordano: [00:23:05] My craft tip I would be, I think this is going to sound very silly and a little pedantic. But I’m gonna say this

Rachael Herron: [00:23:12] Yeah, I love both of those things. 

Edward Giordano: [00:23:14] I say be bold with your writing in your, especially in your first drafts, especially in your first draft, like, like, like if you feel like this is like, I don’t know. I like this season doesn’t is like moving slow and it’s not really working. And I don’t know why. Just, just do a thing where you like, summarize it in a paragraph, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:37] You know, that you just said season, this season. 

Edward Giordano: [00:23:39] Oh, what did I say? Oh yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:42] Because you do, no, I really love that you know that about yourself, that you think about these episodically. 

Edward Giordano: [00:23:47] No. That’s so funny. No, I didn’t even know. Yeah. I do think about it episodically, but if you, if you, if you’re bored, just like, let it, let it go forward. And also something that also, I had a, like, it’s like the most silly recent discovery ever, but sometimes you just need to, like, for reasons that you don’t understand, you just need to write, you just need to write 17 horrible pages 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:10] Yes

Edward Giordano: [00:24:12] for it to be summarized into two damn paragraphs.  

Rachael Herron: [00:24:13] Isn’t that the most annoying thing ever?

Edward Giordano: [00:24:16] but you couldn’t have written the two paragraphs if you didn’t do the 17 pages. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:19] Exactly

Edward Giordano: [00:24:20] This, this is something I told you about, from Americanah, by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi that I really loved. One of the characters is a party and this character’s like, Oh, you’re gonna do this when you start working for me, you’re going to do this. You’re gonna go fly here. You’re going to have clients here. And then he’s going through a hall, his whole, like a monologue about how his business would be if he, if he was employed by him. And at the last line of that paragraph was- and that’s how it went. And then, then all of a sudden we’re like, jumped ahead, three, three months later, he’s like in with all these clients he’s working for this, for this person that you just met at this party, I’m like, damn, 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:49] What a brilliant line 

Edward Giordano: [00:25:00] That is so brave. This is what it was like, it was brave. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:03] It’s brave that I know that when we were talking about it, I have this idea that when she wrote it, it was, she put all of it in there. Like, she probably had 17 pages of a job and flying around and doing all the job and then it wasn’t working and it was boring and she got, and that’s the way it went.

Edward Giordano: [00:25:21] That’s the way it went I’m like, damn, that’s just so brave.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:26] It’s brilliant. Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:25:27] And then, and then my other tip that I would probably bring is like, think about I would say, like, get really interested in a well there’s like to Ed thing. Get really interested in a unique history that people don’t know about and try to apply it to whatever your scenario is. Like I think something that was super successful for Emily St. John Mandel with her Station Eleven book that was so she was like, Oh, dystopia’s hot. Like, that was the hot thing when that came out. But you know what isn’t being discussed that probably was true to her was a Shakespeare troop in a dystopia. Like that, that’s her unique twist that she brought to dystopia 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:06] Yeah. So you can bring your passions in wherever you go. 

Edward Giordano: [00:26:10] Oh, I think I, well, yeah, of course I have lots of passions that my thought is bringing the passions because only you could bring the passions of the way that you would bring them.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:18] I love that. And I love, and I agree with you. I, and I agree, I really believe in not saving anything. Like if you are passionate about it right now, spend it like any dealers that spend it all play it all. Put it on the page and as you do people go, Oh, no, but I got to save that idea for when I’m a better writer. No. When you’re a better writer, when you’ve written more, there will be new ideas. It will be just as exciting, but they can’t backfill until you’ve use them all, right. And I really see you doing that. You go deeply into a passion and you’re just chew, chew it for all it is worth.

Edward Giordano: [00:26:52] Yeah. It’s something that I, I, in my introductory poetry class, I took like for frickin’ ever ago was like, you can’t talk about the world. If you try to talk about the world, we could talk about the world, if you start with the brick. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:04] Yeah. Oh gosh. That’s gorgeous. 

Edward Giordano: [00:27:07] I was like, damn so that, so that was a little bit with the plums and you can’t talking like this, like thought of things, thought of things that I touched on, in the plum story is like immigration, cultural assimilation, privacy concerns.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:22] Yeah. And you tried to write about those things?

Edward Giordano: [00:27:24] You would just fail. You just fail so fast. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:26] It would be so boring

Edward Giordano: [00:27:28] But if you, but if you start with the brick or the plum or whatever it is to you, you can talk about the world. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:33] So the universal is inside the specific. That’s what I always say. Like, if the more specific you go with something, which is so counterintuitive, the more everyone will understand it by looking at that brick. That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Edward Giordano: [00:27:50] Well, this is something I told you before, but I’m going to say it again. It’s- it’s, it’s super quick. It’s big brother. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:59] Yeah. Tell me about this. I really tried. I tried. 

Edward Giordano: [00:28:01] It’s fine. You don’t need, you don’t need to like the show at all, but the lesson that I learned from big brother, for as a storyteller is the entire there’s three episodes a week and the entire two episodes before the third episode, it’s just place setting. And so everyone like is lining up at the table and putting their fork down, their knife down. And like, what’s beautiful about that as a storyteller is that you see, you see a bit, you see the entire table as a, you are, and you know exactly what’s going to happen at the, the, the decision point. So there’s a, there’s in big brother’s competition and the winner of the competition gets to nominate people for eviction. And you get to, and, you know, as the audience who exactly they’re going to attack, go after. About five days before the competition even happens. So it’s all just place setting. So I, what I, what I take for that as a writer is I think you should always let them 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:01] Yes

Edward Giordano: [00:29:02] Let the reader in before a big, or even maybe even a small decision point or conflict point. That’s probably what that’s, where it was like for. The conflict point you should let them know exactly the ramifications of that, of that move, like well in advance so that when it happens, they’re like, Oh, that means that, but then, so then you got, so you get, you get the, that means that formula, but then, you know, something’s always gonna go a little wrong with it. So then, so you, so it’s like, you’re getting two stories packed in the same thing. Cause you, you set the time to let people know, what, what would happen if this action happened and then the action happens and then it doesn’t go exactly that way. So you’re getting, you’re getting two for the price of one.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:46] And you’re going to just exactly what we want to do in writing. We want to telegraph subtly to the reader. So I always think that readers and readers don’t know what we are doing as writers. They don’t know that we are setting them up, which is what our job is. And I bet you’re, you’re an anomalous watcher of these shows. Like most watchers of these shows are just thinking like, Oh, I bet. I bet I know what’s going to happen. And then they’re surprised, but you are really going into it from a story basis, which I love and using that, you know, it’s the same thing like if we’re writing about a character who has got to learn to trust in a book, that’s her character arc in that very first hook scene, it needs to be something about trust. The reader will never get it. The reader will never notice, but, but you’ve just made a promise to them that something that’s going to be fulfilled later, but you’re going to do it sideways. You’re going to do it slant. 

Edward Giordano: [00:30:35] Yeah. Something, something’s always gonna go wrong. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:36] Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:30:37] If things are going, if things are going too right, then that’s a, that’s a position for either re-planning the conflict or summary- summarization to like, move on, move on to the actual things that are gonna be interesting story. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:54] Yeah. I love that. I’m so glad that you said big brother. That’s so cool. 

Edward Giordano: [00:30:58] Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s a problem. I don’t know. I will say that my boyfriend Chris is very excited that I told them the season is half over. And he’s like, thank God. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:13] Does he watch with you at all?

Edward Giordano: [00:31:15] Begrudgingly at best, at best absolute best. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:21] That’s amazing. I love that. Can you tell us the best book you’ve read recently?

Edward Giordano: [00:31:25] Something I read recently that I love, and I’m going to give you like something that was a little older in something recent. Just because I think the little older one was just like, what was so eye opening to me as a writer. And that was Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. Okay. I think I told you a little bit about this before, but for the audience Three Parts Dead, it’s about witches and gargoyles and vampires. Okay. And they’re set in a futuristic steam punk, Boston, sites spoilers, you’re not supposed to know it’s future Boston, but it’s really doesn’t think the story, and they, they all pray to this God and this God dies. And the God leaves a little bit of energy leftover and the, and that God had outstanding prayer contracts with the gargoyles, the witches and the vampires. And so what, what was really great about the book is it’s, it’s a book about contract law, but it’s set with the vampires, witches, and gargoyles and, and I just want to say that was such a, eye opening experience. So I was like, Oh, fantasy has to be all fantasy all the time just to joke. But when I read Three Parts Dead, I was like, Oh, this is- its fantasy, but it’s about contracts law. And then the next book in the series Two Serpent’s Rise is about water management. A sense of its- it’s like, it’s theoretically about like poker games set in the future wild West, but it’s also about water management. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:04] His writing is good enough to get away with this

Edward Giordano: [00:33:05] Well, I think it’s great. And Chris had read it and he loved it. So, and every person I recommended said they loved it. So, so I, I just want people to think like, Oh, you, I think like you think, you know what this genre or this sub-genre is, don’t let, don’t be assuming that you know, what’s, what’s something it is about like, like, like something that I heard on a great courses thing was: So women in the past were only allowed to read these like Gothic ghost stories over and like, that’s the only thing they were like allowed officially to read. And it’s something that some of the authors started doing was that they were hiding in accounting lessons and fiscal management and like recipes and like all of these, like all these things into like, Oh, it’s just a ghost story. It doesn’t matter. So, so, 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:56] But they’re actually learning 

Edward Giordano: [00:33:58] like learning, cause they were only, it was the only type of books they were allowed to like read and be approved and since mid would never touch it, they were the, the, these authors has kept inserting all these life lessons into these ghost story books.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:11] That’s fascinating. 

Edward Giordano: [00:34:13] And then there was, there was this, I- would want me to get to one book, one more book after this one, but Ivan Cheng is an author that I read recently and she is a romance, yeah, basically a romance writer from the 1930s in Hong Kong. And she has a pretty tragic life story, but, but she was writing, she’s writing these romance books that were essentially anti-China, China books. Because they were romance books, she was able to get away with it for much longer. She ended up having to, once the Chinese government figured it out, she ended up having to flee to San Francisco in the sixties or seventies where she lived until like 85. But. But, yeah, so she wrote all these books where there were like, there were romances, there were really anti-Chinese communist books and they were there and I read, I read a bunch of them in a row and they were so good 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:03] That’s amazing! See, listeners you are having an Ed experience right now. You really are. These are things that I bet you did not know about. Okay, what’s the other book you want me to know

Edward Giordano: [00:35:10] Okay, that last book. Okay. I don’t, I know you said just one, but you know, I can’t, I told you I’m a talker. Okay. The last one that I would have mentioned is Rosewater by Tade Thompson winner of the NoMo award, which is an African speculative fiction award. And what I love about that book is it’s the, it begins with this big migration of all these sick people to, to, I forget- the Rosewater, which is, which is a fictional city in Africa. And an alien craft has landed there years ago. And once a year, the alien craft opens up and all the, all the, all the people who are sick, who are in the vicinity get healed. So it, so it causes this yearly pilgrimage to this, because of course, like if you had, if you had a debilitating disease and you could just go to Africa at this time of the year and you’re going to get healed, you’re going to do it. So it caught it. And then it, then it’s also about like telepaths and angels and microbial DNA, like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:12] That’s awesome

Edward Giordano: [00:36:13] And like really checks all my boxes. Like I’ve this theory on, you don’t want to, like, I find it so hard, especially in COVID-19 times to like, let media in, let stories in. But if you let- but there are certain things, certain check boxes that we internally have that if they check it, we’ll like, we’ll let it, we’ll let the story in. Like for some people it just needs to be like a 1926 Oracle setting in England. Like that we’ll let that we’ll let people in to accept the story for what the story is. For me, it’s I think my things are like, you know, I love like bigger philosophy questions about life. As long as it has like a little comedy, a little romance, a little whore. I liked what was it like? Like I’m like, okay, but I don’t want to be too chorus. I don’t want to be too romantic. Like, like there’s like, we all have internally in a checklist. And I guess, I think we should all think about what our checklist is just so we could identify like, Oh, this is my checklist. And this is how I’ll accept stories most easily, not to say you can’t overwhelm, like, not to say that, like, if you love a story that isn’t in, that you can, it’s just, what’s easy for you. What’s your like go to, 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:19] and also that’s really valuable for when you’re thinking about your own work, that, that checklist of basically, I think of it as obsessions in a way, like what will I lose myself down rabbit holes? How can I bring that? I want those stories in that, but I also want to bring it into my stories. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about is incorporating all of these different pieces and facets into the work. 

Edward Giordano: [00:37:39] I want to ask you a quick question. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:41] Yeah

Edward Giordano: [00:37:42] Okay. So pretend right now, you, you close that door. And you are in your room with your dogs for a hundred years, but only one only one day has gone by in real life. Lala is missing you that, and then, and then you write a hundred books, one year in your chamber. What is the book that 80% of those books are? Not- I’m not what is not, I don’t want to hear about the outliers. Like I want to hear about like, what is the, you’ve written a hundred books over and over and over and over again. What is 80% of those books about?

Rachael Herron: [00:38:13] It is, the answer is so stultifyingly boring that I can’t even like, I can almost not bear to be able to say it, but it would be, Jesus. It would be creative nonfiction about what I am doing inside that room. 

Edward Giordano: [00:38:28] Okay. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:29] And how it reflects on memories and hopes and things that I know scientifically so it would be more like the Patreon essays that I write it would be, and it would- being trapped in a room, for a hundred years and they would, they would be boring, but, or they would, I would, I know also in my skill as a writer lies in being able to bring that to life. It wouldn’t be thriller. It wouldn’t be romance. It wouldn’t be anything like that. It would be fully Naval gazing. Totally. You don’t want to think of it, it sounds so narcissistic, but it’s not. It’s, it’s the extrapolation to the connectedness that I feel for everyone else. Right. I’m turning this very difficult question back around on you. What would yours be?

Edward Giordano: [00:39:13] Well, I have the benefit of thinking of this in case you did ask me about 80% of the books, I think would end up in this, like high concept science fiction, geopolitical immigration culture exploration. Like 80% of them would land, like, like Ghostly Chords was like a, like, if you think about the Pink Floyd prison, like those are words that’s like to the right end of my prism. Whereas a sour plum juice is like the full range of my prism. 

Rachael Herron: [00:39:49] Yeah. 

Edward Giordano: [00:39:50] So, so I think I would, I think I would just like pop out books like that over and over again. Like I love, I love like mixing cultures that pop, so this, this is, I know you said earlier that I shouldn’t wait to write a book, but I’m actually waiting to write this book and you could, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna retort against that because I don’t think I’m capable of it yet. And what that is. I want, so in this future and this goes back to the Ursula K. Le Guin quote, which is every book teaches you how, every book makes the rules and once it makes the rules, the book must follow it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:23] Yes. 

Edward Giordano: [00:40:24] Okay. And then with that, I want to do where they, so earth is going to get blown up, you know, pretty normal subject and America, they built a bunch of ships and then they have like, they have only so much money. They like on their last, they could only fund the last half a ship for some group of people so that another country pays for the other half of people. And then throughout the course of their hundred-year journey in space, the English speakers and other people of another nation who speak a different language, they live on this generation ship and I want it to be, it teaching you, it both the book, both creating and English other language Creole and the book in narrative transforming into the Creole as you learn it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:11] That’s a lofty goal. 

Edward Giordano: [00:41:08] Oh, that’s why I’m not doing it right now. That’s why I’m not doing, but I was like, just, just imagine, just imagine like you, you read this like 900-page Opus and at the end of it, you’re like, Oh, I kind of, I kind of understand like, like, like not only changing dialogue, but actually changing in the narrative.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:28] Okay. So I’m going to, I’m going to jump into teacher right now

Edward Giordano: [00:41:32] Oh please.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:33] And say that you should start that book as soon as possible, and you should write it as badly as you can because you, this is your darling. This is probably one of the books of your heart, right? This is, you know we all-

Edward Giordano: [00:41:46] this isn’t, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a number one book in my heart, but it’s, it’s easily in the top three.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:51] Yeah. We have more than one book of our hearts. Just like we have more than one dog’s of our heart. Right. But then some dogs really get us that kind of idea. So this is one of your books of your heart and the longer you wait, this is why I say this the longer you wait, the bigger you’re going to build it up, but it needs to be as good as it can be. No, you’re forgetting that it needs to be a piece of shit that does not work for a long time. And then, and the other thing that I really believe about books, is that they teach you what they want to be. So, so you, you write a crappy first draft, but then you as a human being are smarter when you read it, because the book is now teaching you when you read it over and you’re doing that second draft. You’re a smarter Ed than you could have been before you read the book and then you start to learn from it, how to make it into what you want it to be. But I don’t want you to be scared of this until you’re like 57. 

Edward Giordano: [00:42:41] That’s a good, that’s a solid point. I, I actually, now that you’re saying that, I think you’re right. If I, if I wrote, I still don’t want to release it to lime, like in my fifties, I could say that. But having a first draft done now, when I’m 32, wouldn’t be bad. It would just be like, okay, I could come back to this later. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:02] It’s going to be, it’s going to be like, marinating. I hate that phrase, but like, that’s what it would be doing. It would be sitting, you’re learning all around it. The book is learning. Like, I want you to, I want you to start up that 

Edward Giordano: [00:43:16] You want me to start? Okay. Okay. It’s good. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:18] It’s such a bag. You’re like, Rachael, I want you to do a few things. 

Edward Giordano: [00:43:22] No, no, no, no. I think, I think you’re actually right about that. So, yeah, well, Oh, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve written some questions for you that I want to ask.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:30] We do, I have a time limit and I still want you to be able to talk. Cause I have a top of the hour thing. I still want you to be able to talk about your podcast, find you, so, fill that in.

Edward Giordano: [00:43:40] Okay. Okay. I think you’ll answer this one super quick, but then I, once I ask that you can, okay. What genre or sub-genre? Have you, have you want to written in that you haven’t and why not?

Rachael Herron: [00:43:57] I don’t think there is one 

Edward Giordano: [00:43:58] There isn’t. Okay. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:59] I think I’ve done all the genres that I want to, I cannot think of one because I’ve written in five genres down there, the five that pulled me the most. 

Edward Giordano: [00:44:11] Okay. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:12] So if something occurs to me, I’ll probably do it cause I have no problem jumping ship.

Edward Giordano: [00:44:15] Okay, that’s a, that’s a great answer. My quick answer to that is like, I’m like somewhat, I’m a little tempted to write romance. Everyone likes a good hallmark movie. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:24] Yes! I think you would do it so well, 

Edward Giordano: [00:44:27] but I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of a lot of things, so

Rachael Herron: [00:44:30] You? What are you afraid of?

Edward Giordano: [00:44:32] I’m afraid of like the steamy scenes I’m afraid of like,  

Rachael Herron: [00:44:35] Then make it close door 

Edward Giordano: [00:44:37] Make it close door? Okay.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:38] Especially if it’s a sweet kind of hallmark you feeling, closed door, still hot tension. But the thing is that you, you have, and this, and this was reflected and goes to court. You have such a beautiful, sweet way of looking at relationships between people and that comes out naturally. And you, I think you were doing a really bang up job with that. I think you could write something like that. It would be beautiful. 

Edward Giordano: [00:45:01] Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes, I have, I have a, I have like a project runway inspired. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:06] That’s right. We talked about this. 

Edward Giordano: [00:45:07] Yeah we talked about it. Super- it’s super fun. And if I could, if I insert, you know, I’m the worst, I’m gonna insert one more craft tip, okay. If you could, if you could make a list of all the, all the character interactions in your book and then asks and like do it in colors, like highlight them like green for this character, yellow for this character and ask yourself which two characters haven’t interacted and like try to make a scene for them.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:35] Oh, I like that. 

Edward Giordano: [00:45:36] Just, just like, that was actually how, there was in the original draft of ghost course, I ended up filling it in with like three additional chapters that were like, hold on, these two people didn’t interact enough for me. So then I, 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:47] And as they interact with everyone, everyone you’re learning more about all of their facets or all of their sides.

Edward Giordano: [00:45:54] Yes, that was, yeah, that was another, there was another calf if I want to throw, but yes, I would love for you to all check out my current podcast, which is Linguistics Everyday. It’s, it’s, it’s a little bit like the subtitle in my head. It’s like the dirty globalist podcast. 

Rachael Herron: [00:46:10] What does that mean to you? 

Edward Giordano: [00:46:12] Like, it’s a, so like we’re so much talk right now about American supremacy, American perfection. And I’m just like, well of course me being me, I’m like that, turn it on its head. And like, what can we learn from the world? So, some of the, some of the recent episodes that I thought was really great was we had an episode where we just went through all the Slovic languages and history of Slovic languages. Another episode we did, we did, the impact of K-pop, Dizzy and Bollywood on, on media. And so dizzy is Turkish soap operas that are really popular in South America. So the 

Rachael Herron: [00:46:57] A soap opera is popular in South America. 

Edward Giordano: [00:46:58] That is, 

Rachael Herron: [00:46:59] People are having another Ed moment. 

Edward Giordano: [00:46:55] I’m saying, I’m saying one of the things that are true and then yeah. And it talks about how these like these, yeah. So yeah, if you, if you want to check out Linguistics every day, it’s not going to be, I mean, it’s about linguistics, but I don’t want people to like, Oh, it’s a writing podcast. It’s really, it’s really about exploring language hopping. 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:18] Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s so cool. So cool Ed.

Edward Giordano: [00:47:23] We’re on audible. No, no, no, whatever iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, all the podcasts that you love and some that you don’t like, I’m sure I get, I get frustrated. I get frustrated with Apple iTunes if I’m being honest, 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:36] No everybody does it sucks, 

Edward Giordano: [00:47:38] But I still use it. I can’t, I can’t, I’m- the problem is my listen history is attached to it and I can, it’s like, it’s like the iTunes cuffs. I can’t, I can’t let it go. Like I, my history is too important to me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:49] I’m so fickle. I’ll use like every, but I’m an Android phone person. So I just, I tried everything. Google one is the Google platform is pretty good. 

Edward Giordano: [00:47:58] Oh, that’s good to know. Yeah. And then you could, you could check me out @EdwardGiordano on Twitter. I tweet about a lot of things, currently big brother 22 in addition, I’m also a member of UMB, which is Yes in my backyard, which is a housing movement. California and America for that matter, have a housing shortage crisis 

Rachael Herron: [00:48:20] That’s just getting worse this year.

Edward Giordano: [00:48:18] Yeah. Which is getting, yeah, every year gets worse and people and cities like, like, of course when they’re asked, Oh, should, should more, more houses and more apartments buildings be asked the answer. I, I like to think that most people respond the answer is yes to that question, but when they’re like, Oh, but we want to do it across the street from you. The answer becomes suddenly becomes no. So, so that, so it’s like, yes, yes in my backyard. And then, I’m very, what else is going on? I, you could go to my website EdwardGiordano.net. That’s E-D-W-A-R-D G-I-O-R-D-A-N-O.net. And you could sign up for my mailing list and read like my thoughts on the craft that are silly. I 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:06] I, I’m not even on your mailing list, I need to go join that 

Edward Giordano: [00:49:07] You should join my mailing list. And, they, and I like posts, like things I learned. It’s like this blog series that I’ve started, where I just like talked about I’m in the middle of writing things I learned writing two short stories that didn’t end up being short stories, just like, just like observations on my, on my writing and just trying to like. Like you like, hopefully both learn from myself and hopefully some other people get some stuff out of it

Rachael Herron: [00:49:34] I’m going to join. Everyone else should join.  And I just want to say that this 200th Edisode is just the best thing, because it is actually a reflection of like, I would never have met you. If it hadn’t been for this podcast.

Edward Giordano: [00:49:42] Yeah. I wanted, I wouldn’t know when I, when I came up to you where you’re like scared? it’s like, Oh shit, 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:52] Absolutely not. I was beyond flattered and I was glad that my wife was there so I’m like, see? See?

Edward Giordano: [00:49:58] That’s so, so funny. That’s so great. That’s so great that we, it was such a random encounter. So, yeah, that’s awesome. 

Rachael Herron: [00:50:07] Thank you, Ed. 

Edward Giordano: [00:50:08] Thank you

Rachael Herron: [00:50:09] Thank you for everything. Thank you for everything you do for me. And I really, really appreciate you. Thank you for being here today. 

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.

R.L. Syme is a USA Today best-selling author of small-town romance and cozy mystery. She writes small-town romance as Becca Boyd and cozy culinary mysteries as R.L. Syme. As Becca Syme, she is the creator and founder of the Better-Faster Academy. She teaches the popular Write Better-Faster course for several years as well as Strengths for Writers, and is the author of the Dear Writer You Need to Quit series. 

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!

And for a chance to win Becca’s book, simply sign up for my writer’s email list HERE and shoot me a return email saying you’d like to enter. Or if you’re on the email list already, you have my email address, just write and tell me you’d like a shot at the book!

And HERE is the Decision Tree! (Twitter link, feel free to download from there.)

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 #199 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron, and I am so thrilled that you are here today because today, we have Becca Syme on the show. If you do not know who Becca Syme is and what she does for writers, this is gonna blow your mind. She has blown mine. I’m gonna do a little fangirling here, pre-show and then I’m going to fan girl all over her in the interview. She is this amazing coach who uses a tool called Clifton strengths to basically look at where you are strong and look at where you are weak. There are 34 core strengths. This is something that coaches use in many different professions. Businesses do this, it’s scientific. It’s super interesting, but not that useful if you don’t know what to do with it. And Becca knows what to do with it for writers. It has changed my life, I took her Write Better, Faster Class, maybe about a year ago. Didn’t actually even finish it, just got so much from being in the class and doing the homework and stuff. I was kind of haphazard with it, but I really, really appreciated what she said to me in our one-on-one, about my strengths and how they could work for me and that changed a lot of my process. Basically, we talk about this in the interview, but Becca has you look at the things you’re really good at, and do better with those and basically forget about the stuff that you are bad at, because even if you worked really, really hard to make the things that you are naturally bad at better, they’re not going to get as good as working hard to make the things you’re already a bad-ass at even better.

[00:00:15] So I’m just going to tell you what my strengths are, so, and what I’ve learned from them just really, really quickly. This is not back talking. This is me talking with my very limited knowledge but how it works, and how it’s changed in my writing. So, my number one is input. That means that I want to absorb all information all the time. If you are constantly reading, constantly scrolling, constantly diving deep into rabbit holes that really interest you, you might have high input. It’s great. That serves to really inspire me for a lot of my writing. That’s my number one. My number two is intellection. That can be a little bit problematic and it’s also awesome. But it means I need to think a lot. I can’t just go off halfcocked, even though I try, I really have to do a lot of thinking before I do something. This has been pivotal in me understanding my process, that I can’t just sit down and write garbage. I definitely write garbage. That’s what I write. That’s the first draft, but I have to think about the garbage before I write it, or I just can’t write, if I don’t know what is, if I haven’t thought about what’s going to happen next, I can’t write and I have been forcing myself for a dozen years using sheer discipline and will to make myself sit down and write something that I know on a really deep level that isn’t working, and I throw myself against it again and again, without thinking, it turns out the discipline for me is way down the list. I do not have high discipline, which explains a lot about it, but as soon as I sit down and start jotting notes about what I’m going to write next, as soon as I start brainstorming, as soon as I start thinking it, the, the ice breaks up and I’m able to move through the water again, to use a very clunky metaphor. 

[00:04:00] So knowing that for me, writing has to have additional time built in just for thinking, has changed everything it has made writing for first drafts so much easier and it’s made revision even more pleasant. Number three for me is achiever, I’m just going to do the top five. Number three for me is achiever, which means I love a list. I love to check something off and here is something that has concretely helped me as an achiever. I now have a completed list and everything I complete during the day, I write down, I keep it per week. And at the end of the week, I have a majorly long list of all the things I did. One of the things with achiever is that my achiever in my brain is always telling me I’m not doing a much, not doing enough. I’m not doing as much as I could. And I’m being lazy. I have known on the surface that that is a lie, but that is something that’s gotten me down since I was like seven. I swear to God, since I was seven or eight, I remember the feeling of not being able to get as much as I wanted done. And that’s just part of the achievers’ job. The achiever will always say there’s more to do. Check off more off of those boxes. And now I get to say, Oh, that’s your job. That’s why you feel like that. But look at your list. Oh my God. How much have you gotten done? Life changing, life changing people. 

[00:05:19] Number four is surprise, positivity, which is excellent trait. I love having it as a trait. It means I am a great cheerleader, combined with achiever however, my positivity can sometimes sneak up on me from behind and tap me on the shoulder and say, you really could write three more books this month. You got this. So knowing that I need to balance my positivity against my achiever and know that probably one of them is lying, if not both super, super helpful. I have a tendency to say yes to everything and that I need to backpedal out of things, knowing that has helped so much. And number five, I have strategic, which really helps me with my low discipline, I have, I make strategies to get work done. I don’t need discipline. I have strategies. I have plans in place to get my work done and it’s been working. So what if I don’t have a perfectly disciplined day where everything happens the same way every day. I’ve never had that. And Becca has given me the permission not to need that. I think we talk a little about that a little bit in the interview, and I’ll just mention really quick that my number seven is activator. An activator married with achiever, amazing. Activator gets things started. Achiever finishes things. So combining achiever with activator, along with strategic, to do the planning and intellection to do the thinking, and input to know where to get the information that I need plus positivity, which makes me believe in myself. These are my super powers when I put them together. Who needs discipline? Who needs adaptability, which is just like my, almost my lowest trait. Who needs developer? I don’t need these things. I’ve got these other things that I can focus on and become strong in. 

[00:07:03] So that is a brief testimonial for Becca and seriously my wife asks me if I’m in a cult, I’m a member of Beccan nation, which is an official. I am a member of her Patreon. I basically will do anything she says. So yeah, maybe I’m in a cult, but it’s a really good cult. And I would like every writer in the world to work with Becca. I am not getting paid anything for this, I am not an affiliate. I don’t even know if she does affiliates, but if you want to up your strengths game, I recommend going to her and I was so pleased to have this interview, with her, I just really, really respect what she’s doing and how she’s bringing writers free. So that is my compelling over, oh my gosh. Can’t wait for you to listen to that interview. 

[00:07:57] What’s been going on around here, well we had our orange day yesterday. Where what all day I actually started in the morning and then got darker, darker as the day went on. I’m sure you saw it those orange photographs of buildings and cars needing lights to drive because it was so dark, basically the smoke in the Bay area, much of California, actually the smoke got trapped above the Marine layer. So it shut out all the light. It was like being in that moment of, of a total eclipse except it didn’t stop. It was quite honestly, terrifying in the house, it was pitch black with all the curtains open and our house is very, very bright. It’s got a ton of windows, pitch-black could not walk through the house without all the lights on just as if it were nighttime. My lizard brain did not like it at all. My lizard brain all day was telling me to run, get saved, get out. And there was nowhere to go. So I had one of those days where it was really hard to get the work done. Cause my body kept wanting to stand up and leave, but I didn’t, I have developed through Becca’s classes this was a inspiration from one of her classes. I have developed something I’m not sure if I shared with you yet. So, I think I might’ve mentioned it, but it is the decision tree for when it is hard to focus. I will go ahead and put that in the show notes for this episode at HowDoYouWrite.net if you’re having a hard time in your bothered by current events and current events are keeping you from getting your writing done, come over, grab, download that decision tree and put it into use. It’s been something that’s been helping me a lot when I’m sitting around flapping going, oh my God, the sky is falling. The sky was literally falling and I get out the decision tree and then I go to work. 

[00:09:48] One thing I almost forgot to mention, because I’m a Patreon at the level than I am for Becca, love to support her, she sent me a free copy, signed copy of Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. If you’re watching on the video, I’m going to hold it up. It’s a fantastic book. Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. What do you need to quit? What do you need to quit to get this stuff done? It’s a fabulous book. I already own it though, of course. So I would like to send this to a lucky listener. All you need to do to enter is either sign up for my email newsletter, which is at RachaelHerron.com/Write and then respond to it. Excuse me, Alexa, stop. I use her for everything. I hope I didn’t just make you’re A-L-E-X-A stop. That’s my reminder, I have a podcast coming up soon, but this is more important. So go sign up for my writer’s a newsletter free encouragement, RachaelHerron.com/Write and then respond to it and say, I joined because I want a chance at Becca’s book. If you are already on my email list, all you have to do is send me a quickie email that says I’d like to enter the drawing for Becca’s book. International entries are okay. I believe in this book so much; I will spend $40 to send it to a lucky winner on Australia, if that is you. So that’s all I got to do. Any questions about that, just go to, HowDoYouWrite.net and click on this episode with Becca. So that horrific orange-ness has gone today. We just have falling ash, which is incredibly thick, very hard to breathe. My wife is having a problem cause she’s got asthma and it’s really difficult. But you know what? Our houses aren’t burning down. The firefighters are doing their level best to protect California and Oregon and Washington, and hoping global warming overlords. It’s, it looked yesterday like being in the middle of blade runner or living on Mars, it was, it was, it was scary. I’m glad it’s over. It’s gonna happen again though. If you go to my Instagram, you can see how I show, how Californians were a double mask. Cause you gotta wear N95 to filter the smoke when you’re outside, but in N95 doesn’t protect anyone from COVID.

[00:12:00] So, then you have to wear a mask over that. So I have a special method of doing that. Go to my Instagram, RachaelHerron to look at that it’s quite alarming. Nothing else I’ve noticed going on. I turned in the final, final, final, final little mini revision. It took me like an hour to my editor. So Hush Little Baby is off my desk. And what being off my desk means is that it has been accepted. Formally accepted by my editor as a book that is good enough to go to print. I have succeeded in fulfilling my part of that contract. It does not occur inside the contract until the very last revision is done. This is pre-copy edit. So now my editor pushes it off her desk. As soon as she pushes it off her desk, over to the copy editor station, I get paid. That is when it’s called delivery and acceptance. The acceptance is the hard part. So I’ll get paid next week. The one quarter of this royalty, again, I, they broke this book, and my last book, up into three or four payments instead of the old fashioned three, I guess now we’re going to four. You get a quarter of your royalty, not royalty- a quarter of your advance when you sign the contract, you get another quarter when you deliver the book and it’s accepted, which just happened. You get another quarter when the book is published, which will happen in spring in hardcover. And then in my contract, I get another quarter when the book comes out in paperback the next year, which is fine. That means that money is rolling in. And actually, because Stolen Things just came out in paperback a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. I just got paid for that. So it’s really nice to have those little chunks of money coming in. Would I love to get an advance all upfront? Sure. Do I mind getting money over the transom into my bank account? I really love it. I can recommend. So that’s happening, I’m working on revisions of You’re Already Ready and my classes are divine. My new 90 days to Done and 90-day Revision are filled with the best people and we’re having so much fun and they’re working so hard and I am so proud of them and I’m in the trenches with them working on my revision.

[00:14:00] So, all of that is good. Anyway, I’m babbling because we are wasting precious time. You need to get into this interview with Becca Syme, audio writer, you need to quit. You need to do a lot of things, but first on that list is to be here with Becca. I hope that you enjoy, I hope that you become a convert and join our non-cult it is not a cult buddy, it is freaking awesome. So enjoy writers, happy writing, and we’ll talk soon. 

[00:14:37] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more. And thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:37] Well I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Becca Syme. Hello, Becca.

Becca Syme: [00:15:42] Hi! I’m so excited to be here.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:45] Stop it, I am the most excited. Let me give you a little bio and then I will go ahead and fan girl all over you some more. R.L. Syme is a USA Today best-selling author of small town romance and cozy mystery. She writes small town romance as Becca Boyd and cozy culinary mysteries as R.L. Syme. As Becca Syme, she is the creator and founder of the Better-Faster Academy. She teaches the popular Write Better-Faster course as well as Strengths for Writers, and is the author of the Dear Writer You Need to Quit book series. Bec, I think that’s honestly, the first place I heard of you was Dear Writer You Need to Quit, I think I heard you on a podcast or something. And I remember becoming really mortally soul offended by the words, Dear Writer You Need to Quit. And of course, like I’m really interested in those kinds of reactions. So like, well, I gotta, I gotta look up that book. And I read the book, fell in love, I just can’t get enough of what you do. I’ve done your courses. I’m a Patreon supporter. I’m doing your little, what are you calling those? The intensives that were doing

Becca Syme: [00:16:48] The intensives. Yeah, there are secret masses, yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:16:53] Exactly. And I just want to talk to you basically about your writing process, because you probably don’t get a chance to talk about that very often. You’re always talking about the Clifton strengths. But will you tell our listeners who have never heard of you? What the heck a Clifton strength is, it why and what it means to writers?

Becca Syme: [00:17:11] Yeah, it’s a, it’s a success metric, right? Like I, I’m a success coach. That’s what I like, what I have done previous to being a writer and what I do. And primarily I’m looking for the designated patterns in which people are successful. So the Clifton strengths was an active, started off as the academic research project where someone was asking, you know, decades and decades ago. Is it possible that there’s a pattern to how people are good at stuff, and how like the best of the best people stand out at what they do? Is there a pattern to that that’s predictable? And which is different from how most personality tests are created, right. Where they’re like, Hey, I think there’s four types of people let’s make a test for that. This was very much like, let’s go interview the best NBA basketball stars, the best housekeepers at Disneyland, the best CEOs, like what’s the best teachers. Let’s see how they do what they do. And is there a pattern there? and they interviewed 2 million people. They found a pattern, 2 million best of the best people pattern. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:18] Oh my god

Becca Syme: [00:18:19] Yeah. It was an amazing process. And, and then when they created the test, it was not to try to explain everything about life. It’s specifically tried to explain how are you successful? And, and so what I do then, cause I’ve been doing this since 2006, 2005-ish, so what I do is we look at how you score on that metric because it’s, you know, it was gathered, been analyzed, like whatever, it’s a metric. So we look at how you score on that metric and what your top strengths are. And then how can we translate that into helping you be more successful, in how you are the most successful already, right. But in writing, instead of just like, as a human, although we talk about the human stuff too, but

Rachael Herron: [00:19:15] The human stuff comes in, but where I think you catch all of the, all of our eyeballs is through the writer portal. And the thing that kind of blew my mind is that there are 34 strengths that they look at and you, and probably, you know, gallop in the people who do it, who, who owned the metrics, you know, probably say this too, but I really take it from you, is that you look at strengthening your top strengths and kind of ignoring your bottom strengths. Right? Why did we do that? 

Becca Syme: [00:19:46] Yes, cause- well, cause, cause I want people to be successful, right. And because that’s the way they gathered the data was specifically about, let’s go intervie the people who are known to be the best at what they do in their industry. Like the top of the top and the guy who made this, he has one of the strengths that’s obsessed with success. And so he was not wanting to know what the general personality of the population was that literally how did you get to be successful? Right. And so he did those interviews and it’s like, well, there’s a pattern here and it’s not just a pattern like, Oh, this is a generic pattern. It’s down to, so one of Rachael’s top strengths is intellection, it’s down to like, she was just in a class with 30 other intellection writers and they’d literally use the same language to describe how they do things without even knowing that they’re doing that. And that’s what they discovered when they were doing these interviews 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:56] Wow

Becca Syme: [00:20:57] It’s like a futuristic in Bangladesh and a futuristic in Canada, talk the same way about their, how their success happens, because they’re utilizing these neural nets that are very cemented. Right? and so for me, a lot of people are really into neuroplasticity and they’re like, oh, but we’re plastic. We can do whatever we want. And I’m like, no, we can’t. Like when, I mean, first of all, that’s a hard enough thing for people to hear, right. Is you can’t just do whatever you want because you have all of these cemented pathways that are less plastic. It’s not that they’re not plastic. It’s that they’re less plastic. So for me then I think strategically, right? If I know what those less plastic places are, then I’m already firing so quickly and easily in those places. Let’s work with the places where I’m already like, absolutely focused in on how to be successful naturally in those places, instead of saying, for instance, there’s a strength called discipline. Instead of saying-

Rachael Herron: [00:22:05] It’s very low for me. 

Becca Syme: [00:22:06] Which is also low for me,

Rachael Herron: [00:22:07] Yeah

Becca Syme: [00:22:08] And, and no offense to the discipline people, but like, I’m plenty successful without it. Thank you very much. I don’t need it. And so I would say like, if we decide as a culture, discipline is the strength everyone should have, which is kind of what we have done, especially for writers. Then all the people who are not hardwired for discipline as a success pattern again, it’s not that I can’t be disciplined with a small beat, but if I’m not hardwired for that as a success pattern, then what am I doing trying to make myself do that when I could have just as much or more success than someone doing the way that I do it right. So then for me, what I like about it is, it doesn’t try to say we’re not plastic. It doesn’t try to say you can’t change. In fact, the big part of what I do is try to make you better and, and hone those places, better, faster, right? Like that’s why we’re called that. But to say, let’s not fight against the places where we’re less plastic than the other places and let’s work with what we’re already so good at because you’ve had decades and decades of firing in your neurons and this way. So unlearning those patterns is going to take a lot of time. And do you really want to do that?

Rachael Herron: [00:23:23] Right

Becca Syme: [00:23:24] Wouldn’t it be easier to just do it this way? I go with like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:28] I could spend so much energy, so much of my energy trying to be disciplined 

Becca Syme: [00:23:32] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:23:33] And I would not do well at it and I’ve spent basically 48 years trying to be disciplined. Right. But now that I know that I’m achiever activator are in my top 10, 

Becca Syme: [00:23:41] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:23:42] I just, I rested that is all the discipline I need. I know how to. 

Becca Syme: [00:23:45] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:23:46] Activate. And I know how to check off a list, you know, and putting those things together. So you have, this is my time to say you have really changed my life and the way

Becca Syme: [00:23:55] Thank you 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:56] that I work, and the way that I accept not only myself, but all of my students for the last like semester or two. I’ve had a real, since I’ve been working with you, I’ve had a much better appreciation for that diversity and my, you know, I never knew, I never thought my way was the best way, but I know that my way is the best way for me. And I like to present a lot of different options to people, which is why I have a podcast all about writing process, because people need to hear all of the things. But knowing that everybody is so different and has these incredible skills that I might not even understand because they’re so low in my strengths has really changed me as a person. My, my, my wife isn’t- not really, really Becca again. Let’s talk about that again. Yeah. Great. 

Becca Syme: [00:24:41] I get that, I always I’m like, it’s not me. I mean, I’m happy to be the purveyor of the information, right. But what I love about it is that it’s not me at all. It’s this tool, the tool is just what the work that they did to make sure that it was accurate is amazing. And it’s because the guy who did it was so committed to wanting something that could be completely accurate for every single person. So instead of like the four quadrant stuff, which is always only a few, if you’re familiar with the bell curve, right? Like the standard deviation, they’re only ever accurate for like one standard deviation. And he didn’t like that. He wanted it to be because he knows how complex people are and in order for it to explain our complexity, the tool itself has to be incredibly complex. And it is like, it’s the reason there’s 34 instead of 4, or like their, some other strengths programs that have come up since this are like 12 or 15 or something like that. But it really is. He wanted it to be as precise as possible and that’s why people get such a huge change out of it is because all the work that needed to be done was done 60, you know, 50 years ago and so, it’s pretty amazing 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:03] Yeah. You are also incredibly talented at knowing writers. That’s actually brings me right into where I, I wanted to talk about. You are not just this strength coach for writers. You’re a writer. You are a working, butt-in-the-chair writer, which I so appreciate, I, I, one of my pet peeves in life is that people who write books about how to write, but they haven’t written any books or they coach people how to write and they don’t write. So you are doing it. So I would love to know you can feel free to use any of the strengths language and explain any of that. 

Becca Syme: [00:26:33] Sure

Rachael Herron: [00:26:34] But what is your writing process? How do you actually get, and I’m specifically, I guess asking about the fiction, first here, how-

Becca Syme: [00:26:42] because the nonfiction process is completely different, totally different. So I started writing fiction, like a lot of us, right? Like I started writing fiction as soon as I could write. And my very first novel that I wrote, which was the one that ended up selling, I was one of those Indies who got into Indie very early. So like, you know, 2012, when you could just sort of throw a book up and it would make you, you know, a hundred thousand dollars. So I was one of the early adopters and my very first book, I always say, which is why it’s not available anymore was basically Julie Garwood fanfiction. Like it was my own story, but it was pretty much like 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:23] It sounds great. 

Becca Syme: [00:27:24] And so I kind of what I love, you know, and which is why it’s sold so well because everybody else who also likes 13th century, you know, Scottish kilted, you know, whatever. The Highland Renegades was the name of the series and, and it sold well, and it did well and, you know, and then as I started transitioning, because one of my personality traits is I don’t stick in one genre because I get really bored. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:55] What is that to you

Becca Syme: [00:27:56] So both learner and ideation have some of that where it’s the, like the process of learning how to write in a genre is really fun for me. And so, I mean, I think I’ve written in eight different fiction genres at this point. Well, three of them have sold well enough that I could have made like a living doing it, but then like 5 of them, did not. You know what I mean? 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:22] I do

Becca Syme: [00:28:23] So, yeah, it was definitely experimental, but so, so much of my process as a writer was driven by, I love learning how to write a new thing and because as a reader, I love to read so much, you know, broad spectrum of stuff. Anytime I would get kind of bored with what I was writing, I’d be like, oh, maybe I’ll go try romantic suspense. I’ll try paranormal romance. I’ll try, you know, and I would keep sort of moving into what I thought was fun and even cozy, which I’ve loved and have had a great time writing. Like I’m, I’m gonna transition into another version of cozy because like as a learner, I just love learning how to make the audience happy in that genre. And so I don’t have one of those trajectories where like I hit, like sometimes I wish I had where I just hit the Highlanders and then I would have like 700 Highlanders books out by now, and I would be a million dollars  

Rachael Herron: [00:29:25] The Highlander writer. 

Becca Syme: [00:29:27] Yeah. I’d be like the queen or whatever, like I, that’s just not me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:31] This explains a lot about why I have written in five different genres I have high learner, and I just, yeah, I just can’t get, I can’t, I, I got so bored with romance I could kill myself with contemporary romance. 

Becca Syme: [00:29:44] Yeah, me too. And yeah, but now, like I’m coming back, like now that I’ve been doing mystery for three and a half, three and a half years now. I’m like, oh, I’m a little bored with the mystery. So like, I’m gonna go back and do another version of romance that I haven’t done before. And so I feel like as a learner, that’s part of my process, is knowing that I’m not gonna be one of those people. And what I love about this though, and this is why I think the strengths are just so consistent is I also don’t care. Like do I want to make money? Of course everybody needs to eat, but like, I want to make enough money to be not stressed out, but like, I definitely am not one of those people who looks at all of the big, you know, high figure or whatever, or things that like, I don’t shoot for those things. I love to just write stories and so I’m wired to be happy being a learner and the most fun I will ever have, is like right now, I’m reading all of these books and this new genre to like, get a feel for the emotions and stuff like that. And to just see what people are doing so I don’t do anything too similar and, and I’m like, I love just cracking books open and learning about the genre expectations and reading the reviews and seeing what people like, like that is craft to me.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:13] That is so totally, totally- where is your input?

Becca Syme: [00:31:17] One. It’s number one. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:18] Yeah, me too. Okay. So then how do you, in terms of process, how do you structure your days so that you get fiction done as well as all, I mean, you are so busy coaching. I can’t even believe all of the things you do. The more I see what you’re doing behind the scenes. Like she’s doing that. Oh my God. She’s got that class going. She’s got that with like, how do you do it? 

Becca Syme: [00:31:39] Well, thank God I’m not married. And I mean that like very honestly, like, because when I’ve been in periods where I’ve had a because of my personality, and I can explain that in a second. When I’ve been in periods where I’ve had a really intense relationships, like romantic relationships, I always frustrate them because I don’t need as much from the relationship as, as they do. And so I, I’m like, I want to work, I love, and I’ll take my computer while we’re watching TV and I always get like, are you gonna talk to me? and I’m like, I’m listening. You know what I mean? Like while I’m working, and so God bless the dude who eventually ends up with Becca because he will be a Saint I promise. But honestly, I get so much done because I’m not married and I don’t have kids. And there is the, what we call the essential pain, right, of when I have more than one priority in my life, I have more than one priority. If I have a wife or a husband or children, they deserve my time, just as much as my career does. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:50] I forget that

Becca Syme: [00:32:51] And so it’s reasonable, you know, that I would spend more time with them. So some of it is I have a lot of freedom, to make my own, the another part of it is with my personality. I have a strength called a ranger, which means that I like filling the plate more and more to sort of see how much I can have spinning at one time. And I actually do better and more productive the more stuff that I give myself to do, as opposed to like, cutting down. So it’s very similar to achiever in that way, right. Where like, I feel really good if I am, I have a big plate and when it’s full, I feel great. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:30] Yeah. 

Becca Syme: [00:33:31] And so my structure is different every day. And I think this is the other piece about, you know, not having something like discipline or consistency as a strength, which are all about predictability and sameness, which are awesome. They’re great. I just don’t have them. And so I don’t write every day, I don’t write fiction every day, and what I tend to do, one of my friends calls it portalling, is like I’ll sort of portal into a book, and just want to like write as much as I can because I get really lost in the world. And then I kind of portal out, and I don’t do well with the 10 minutes and 15 minutes and it’s like my friend Terry jokes, he’s like, he’s one of our coaches, right. He always jokes with me. He’s like, I could see when you did the Vangie book. Cause my last mystery I did in like two, two or two or two and a half weeks, I think I wrote 80,000 words. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:30] Oh my God. 

Becca Syme: [00:34:31] And yeah. And he’s like, I could see it because you’ve got high. Like, you felt like a druggie, right, and he’s like, I picked out. Yeah. Like I was cracked out and he’s like, I could see that you wanted to do that more again and of course, you know, that can’t happen all the time. And so I was in a slower period and I really just put the blinders on and kinda, you know, went into the world for a while. And then I had to come back out after the re- the book was done. And then, so now I’ll have to get back in and so when I do structure my days, when I’m doing fiction, I will often like, you know, with, with my assistant, I’ll be like, I’m going to block off until 9 o’clock. You know, or 10 o’clock and then I’ll get up at 4 and I’ll just write for 6 hours. And, I have this thing on my Patreon called The Office, where we all meet in person on zoom and we write together and I’ll just go sit in the office and write, write, write, write, write. And then go, you know, work and then get back in and write, write, write, write. So that’s kinda how I, but yeah, I’d never do the same thing every day 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:42] That explains you and I are similar in many ways. And that, that explains so much about me to where I’ve, I’ve always been trying to craft the perfect day for myself and it just doesn’t stick. It doesn’t stick. And it’s awesome. Every perfect day is different.

Becca Syme: [00:35:52] I love it. I love the how different my days are. I would never want- and that’s again, evidence of the low discipline. It’s not that I think people who do that are doing something wrong. It literally is that I don’t get any feeling of success out of doing the same thing every single day. And people who are higher in discipline or higher consistency responsibility sometimes those are all strengths, right. They feel so good when they can just do like every single day, the same, they feel so great. And it’s like that feeling that they get that euphoria, that’s what I feel when all my days are different. 

Rachael Herron: [00:36:34] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Becca Syme: [00:36:40] The fact that all my days are different. So like sometimes, you know, the, the, what is that from Peter Parker, like, with great power comes great responsibility. I feel like it’s the, there’s always a downside when you’re really good at something. And that means that when I really good at not being consistent, then times when I need consistency are super challenging for me, because I’ll get into a deadline and it’ll be like, I need to write every single day for the next three weeks. But because I’m so used to being available for people, like, I’ll get a call, like, Hey, can we do coaching? You know, I’m in a crisis. And, and crystal will be like, you really need to, you know, can you do this? And I admit, I have these times of like, yes, you know, like I want to stay in the consistency, but then part of me is like, 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:36] but I’ve got to get out. Yeah. 

Becca Syme: [00:37:37] To do the non-consistent things. So, planning is hard because I never- I like that it’s unpredictable, but I think I’ve just come to terms with that and I’m like, yeah, it’s just, it’s what’s gonna happen. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:50] Where is your adaptability? 

Becca Syme: [00:37:53] 16 or 17 out of 34. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:54] Okay. Yeah

Becca Syme: [00:37:55] So it’s not super high, but a ranger is like adaptability, but not people focused-task focused instead, and so it’s very, almost, let’s see how we can fit all of this together and I literally will think of it in my head. I’ll be like, well, I have this block, so let me split that block and half will do the coaching here, I’ll move this block here. And it just kinda half like click, like that. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:21] Wow. Cool. What is your biggest joy when it comes to the writing?

Becca Syme: [00:38:26] Probably the readers, like, so the Vangie series, which is my mystery, has not sold as well as really probably any of my other series it’s weirdly is not the bestselling, and I say weirdly because it has a cult following, like I cannot even explain, like I wrote three books in a row and release them three months apart, back in, I think 2018 was the last release. And, and then I took almost two years off before I released the next book and that was not intentional. I got emails almost every day or Facebook posts almost every day and sometimes multiple times a day, but it was from like the same 400 people. So it was not, it wasn’t like when you hear of a cult following like that, usually it’s like, you know, representative of 10,000 people or something. This was literally like the same, you know, 400 fans and God bless them, they are obsessed with her. They talk about her, my sleuth, like she’s a real person, they’ll sometimes post about, Oh, I think Vangie  would like this and then they’ll tag me and something

Rachael Herron: [00:39:44] That’s adorable

Becca Syme: [00:39:45] It’s so fun. It’s the best. But it’s frustrating that the books don’t better but I also get it. So like in cozy, I am on the long side, I write 90-ish thousand and most cozies are long at 60. 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:43] Yeah, yeah.

Becca Syme: [00:40:44] Right. And so I write very long and complicated stories and they’re a little bit darker. We call them, this is sort of explains why they don’t sell. We call them Grim Dark Cozies. 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:19] That sounds awesome to me. 

Becca Syme: [00:40:20] They’re, they’re like, if, if, if you had Disneyland, but then there’s a very thin veneer and underneath, it was like, you know, Halloween town, that’s kind of what they’re like, because they feel very cutesy. But at the same time, they’re super dark and the undertones are very dark. And so, and they’re really complicated. And so and they really don’t follow a genre and so they do not market easily or well, and but the people who love them love them so much. And so I get the most joy, I think, out of talking to the fans, like Vangie’s real, because to me she’s real. Right. And so I love that. I love the, the shared delusion of the fiction, right. It’s just like, we’re all lost in the same world together and, and I just love that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:20] Speaking of being able to market. How do you, how do- this is not on our list of questions. How do you market? Do you run ads? Do you have somebody that does that for you? What, what level of time are you putting into that? Because I’m speaking selfishly, because I put like zero time into it and I always need, no, I need to do more. 

Becca Syme: [00:41:39] Yeah, I would say the same thing. I put almost no time into it and I in fact, the last release, I hired somebody to help me with the release and about halfway through the planning, I was like, I don’t want to do any of this stuff,

Rachael Herron: [00:41:53] I’m out. 

Becca Syme: [00:41:54] Yeah. I kind of did. I kind of tapped out a little bit and, and I was like, cause I, I don’t think it sells books and it isn’t that I think it’s worthless for everybody. I think for me and for the way that I work, I don’t easily market things and it’s not that I don’t like talking about it. It’s not- it’s literally is. So I’m gonna nerd out a little bit on strengths for just a sec.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:20] Yes, please.

Becca Syme: [00:42:21] So I have a strength called significance, and it’s my number, number five strength. And what that means is I want what I do to matter to people. And so I don’t, so just as a for instance, I don’t market for my nonfiction, I don’t zero. 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:41] Wow

Becca Syme: [00:42:42] I finally started running ads on my nonfiction books because literally my staff was like, we will kill you if you don’t try to get these books into the hands of people. I don’t market, I don’t do affiliates. I don’t do any of that stuff and the purpose is, because if it stops filling, because we’re not being helpful enough, then we need to pay the consequences for that. Like, I’m not going to trick people into taking my classes. Not again, not, this isn’t about anybody else’s marketing except mine, right, right. But I feel for, for what I want to get out of it, I only want to do things that are making such a significant difference to people that they have their own legs. So I feel the same way about my fiction and I’ve had to unlearn some of that because I also need to meet, I mean, I need to make money and I do care about the books and I know that it’s really hard to sell them these days without advertising. And so I will now run ads because I have to, because in order to you know, sort of quell this thing of like, if I don’t run them, no one is gonna see the books but I don’t do any other advertising. Like I have a newsletter, but we don’t use it and I have a Facebook page, but we don’t use it because to me, the test of whether a book should sell or not is an important test for me to pass. So I want to get it in front of enough of the right people that I can tell if I’ve done my job or not. And then at that point, if it doesn’t pick up on its own, I trust the market. I didn’t do a good enough job. I need to go back and figure out how to do a better job as a writer. And so, you know, that’s, that’s what I learned with every genre, right. Is I’ve subsequently learned anytime I do too much marketing my personality bulks a lot. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:43] Yeah

Becca Syme: [00:44:44] Like just for an instance, I feel like the most successful fiction series that I ever wrote, I co-wrote with somebody under a pen name and we made a lot of money, but I feel like I wrote her coat tails into that money, right. Like not into the books being good, but into how much money we made. And I had a real hard time calling myself a six figure author because I was like, like, I don’t know that I would have been able to make that on my own writing in that genre. And so, just knowing how my significance functions has allowed me to make a lot of choices to say like, okay, I’m not gonna be like other people. And so I’m not going to listen to people who are like, Oh, you should only write in one genre. You should do all the marketing you should- and anytime I hear that, I’m just like, what should I?

Rachael Herron: [00:45:42] Well, you have that beautiful thing that everybody who gets to know you knows, learns really quickly is the push back against the should, is the question the premise, or as you say QTP, yeah. So we’re diverting from the questions, throwing the rest of the questions out. What can you tell us a little bit about that QTP? 

Becca Syme: [00:46:00] Yeah. So, because I know so much about how different we are and I’ve seen it, cause it isn’t just like a theory for me. It’s literally like I didn’t write a nonfiction book about this stuff until I had seen enough data of how this has changed author’s lives that I felt like I had something important to say about it. So I had coached thousands of writers already by the time I wrote the first book, and the reason I did it was because I saw the biggest transformations always happened when someone was following advice from someone else that doesn’t know them. It doesn’t know anything about their brain, but has decided that they’re an expert about something and for good reason, usually, right? But they were trying to follow advice that wasn’t, for them, it was for somebody else and they didn’t know it wasn’t for them. And so when we came along, I would get this moment of like, you know, but I should write every day and I’m like, but should you? And not just the way I say it now, which is sort of cutesy, like, but should you, but it was actually like, are you looking at the data? Your own data says you shouldn’t write every day, but you’re ignoring the data because someone else has convinced you that they know more than you do about how you should be productive. And, and I sound a little preachy about this because it’s not, for me, it’s not about the experts or what the experts should or shouldn’t say. They should say exactly what they’re saying. We are not good decision makers as listeners of nonfiction and consumers of nonfiction, because we don’t ever question the premise of why somebody might be saying something. So, and that was really how QTP came about was that, you know, starting in 2014 and 2015, I was starting to coach writers and seeing we really are believing things we shouldn’t believe, because our assumption is that the expert knows the best practice. And most of us don’t know enough about neurobiology to know just what it means that we have different neural nets than other people they don’t understand. And especially because neuroplasticity is such a big buzz word and everybody’s like, you can do whatever you want your neuroplastic. And I’m like, you don’t understand her plasticity, buddy. 

Rachael Herron: [00:48:30] I have this image of neuroplasticity is one of my, my wife’s relatives lives on the Oregon trail. Like there is a cut from like, you could just walk in front of the ranch and there’s the Oregon trail. And that is neuroplastic. That’s a that’s, that’s a, that’s a piece of mud and he put enough water there. Maybe those ruts would go out, but those ruts were worn, 150 years ago. And the two wagon ruts are still there after all of these storms, after 150 years, 

Becca Syme: [00:48:59] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:49:00] It’s neuroplastic, you could dig that up and move that mud around, but otherwise it’s staying as a rut. 

Becca Syme: [00:49:05] Yeah. And unless you have a way to dig it up with like a backhoe, like the natural process itself, you would have to start crossing that path 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:17] Yes

Becca Syme: [00:49:18] With another, like the same thing that made it like to keep the metaphor the same. It’s not like you have access to a backhoe. And a lot of people who talk about neuroplasticity, they’re like, Oh, but if you do a knock, you can change it. I’m like, okay, dude, let’s talk about this. Because it’s, it’s always a dude. It’s not always a dude. You know what I mean? But in my head, because sometimes women, but in my head it’s, it’s dude, because it’s the person who doesn’t know anything about it, but thinks they know everything and they’re using the buzzword. So anyway, clearly this is backless issue with this metaphor. It literally is they don’t know enough about how the neuron, how neural nets are made to be able to talk about it, because, so let’s say they’ve never studied the actual statistics for human adult behavioral change, like adult behavioral change for, and this is universal, right? This is not just like limited to a study, it’s replicated over and over again. So anyway, adult behavioral change statistics are out a year 3% of people have assimilated out of a hundred 

Rachael Herron: [00:50:33] Wow

Becca Syme: [00:50:34] percent out three years, it goes down to one percent. It’s insane. Like most people do not keep what they assimilate. And again, this is what we talk about in my Write Better, Faster class. The reasons are multivariable, but the biggest one is because people try to change everything or they try to do a giant system change instead of targeted stuff. So for instance, something like atomic habits has a better chance of success, which is why he’s seen so much success because where we are plastic. It’s the repetitive, you know, consistent small 

Rachael Herron: [00:51:13] Small things

Becca Syme: [00:51:14] Yeah. Very small. And, and that’s why that particular neuroplastic kind of philosophy has taken off so much is because it’s actually correct. You can actually like people have a better chance of long term assimilation, but most of what we do, is we try to attack the entire system. So like, let me find a new productivity system. Let me find a new weight loss system. And I’m like, actually probably have better, like luck if you just consistently change one thing about your, your stuff for a long time. And then after a while, you eventually start the habit stacking. Right. But because this whole thing of 30 days to a new, a new habit is such a load. It’s like, I’m not sure if this is an explicit podcast or not. 

Rachael Herron: [00:52:11] Go for it. We can swear.  

Becca Syme: [00:52:12] Yeah. It’s bullshit. Like just period. Because it totally depends on that Oregon trail metaphor is a perfect one. It totally depends on how deep the ruts are and how long you’ve been building them. And so, and this is why strengths are so important for me. Cause I’m like, let’s just assume that you’re not going to do the work to change the ruts. Like let’s just assume you don’t have 40 years to make yourself not intellectual.

Rachael Herron: [00:52:41] And a lot of energy. 

Becca Syme: [00:52:42] Yes. 

Rachael Herron: [00:52:43] Backhoe and gasoline 

Becca Syme: [00:52:45] That’s the thing that you do, right. Yeah. So like, let’s assume you don’t have the energy to change the part about yourself that needs to think about stuff. Let’s just assume that. If we assume that that’s actually a good thing and not a bad thing, what could we do? And this is what strengths does that I love so much. What could we do if we assume that how you are wired as a positive and not a negative, 

Rachael Herron: [00:53:09] Yes

Becca Syme: [00:53:10] We don’t try to change anything about your wiring. We try to work with like, let’s build let’s pave the Oregon trail in your head, instead of trying to like gradually blow the wind a little harder. Over the course of how many friggin years you would have to do the- I’m sorry, I just got so frustrated with this. 

Rachael Herron: [00:53:32] And I think, can I share with you my most recent, like breakthroughs in this? And I’m also number one input and my curse. And it’s a, it’s a blessing. It’s such a blessing, but my curse for the last, probably three or four years, especially this year, it seems to have reached this, reach, this tipping point. My curse has been email and it is my favorite thing too, because people send me amazing emails and I love responding them to them. But knowing that I was input and knowing that my email inbox felt like the ultimate source of input information, these data points that I needed to go out and collect and use and think about, and then go right into in collection and I was spending two or three days, sorry, two or three hours a day in email, really reluctantly and piss off, and I tried everything and I just, just a couple weeks ago I use boomerang anyway, and I just decided I would look at email on late Monday afternoons and late Friday afternoons. It keeps all the other email out except for my friends, my family, my editor, my publisher. And I, I shit you not, back at you, like your name is white listed because I’m like, I am not going to miss one of those intensive gossips I will get it and the, the quietness, I still keep my email inbox open. I go look at it, and it takes me one second to say, Oh, it’s still empty. And I go back to writing because I know that that input part of my brain wanted to see that information that was coming in. I took it away from myself and there’s so much peace. 

Becca Syme: [00:55:04] Yeah. I actually got the email back, the response when I hit reply and it said, I, and I’m like, good job. Like literally I thought in my head that is so smart because we don’t need to respond that quickly. It’s just that most of us have been trained that if people need to hear back from us, right. So what you did was you set the expectation, 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:30] Yeah. And I also set a pace that they, right, and if they say, say the word urgent, in the cloud box, you’ll get in and I’ll, and I think I said in the email, I’ll likely see it sooner. I still don’t say I’m gonna a be- treated as urgent. Cause it’s probably not urgent!

Becca Syme: [00:55:45] Yes exactly. Like don’t do that shortcut cause that’s just not cool. But like, but if it really is urgent, you wanna- and that’s what we’re always worried about, right? 

Rachael Herron: [00:55:52] Yes

Becca Syme: [00:55:53] Oh, but I’m gonna miss something and I’m like, well, give people away. And I love that you did that, because I thought the wording was perfect.

Rachael Herron: [00:56:00] Thanks

Becca Syme: [00:56:01] And this is an example and I love that you brought that up because this is an example of what could be a debilitating behavior. If you know where it’s coming from,

Rachael Herron: [00:56:12] Yes

Becca Syme: [00:56:13] You can control it, like you can pay that friggin channel and make it and not be like, oh, my input it’s so annoying. It’s so horrible. 

Rachael Herron: [00:56:21] You don’t get away from my email, no  

Becca Syme: [00:56:23] Right? Like, no. And this is the key to, was like, there were some things about input that are so gold for writing. I mean, it’s, it’s almost like each of the strengths has a way to sort of please readers in a particular way.

Rachael Herron: [00:56:41] Interesting. 

Becca Syme: [00:56:42] And there are things about input, like inputs will research farther and longer and deeper than anybody else. And so they find these things and I can always tell when I, when I have read an input book, because it’s like you find these things that nobody else will find, because as an input, like when I write a character, excuse me, sometimes I’ll actually go to like blogs written by people who have the job that my character has. And like, I’ll read those or like, I watch a documentary about a particular location or something, and I’m looking and casting wide. And, and then I find this little golden nugget thing and people be like, oh my gosh, did you use to live there? And I’m like, “Nope, I’m just input.” But it resonates on such a deep level with the readers that they remember it. And I think that’s part of what, why I know it is, that’s part of what as a, as a nonfiction writer. It’s part of what makes people like my book so much because they feel like they hear their own words in the books, and that is because my input collects the phrasing, cause I know that strengths is a language and so my input collects the phrasing. So like I can talk back to you in your own language, even when I don’t have those strengths and that’s, I wouldn’t be able to do that on the same level that I can without input. So I’m like, I love input. It’s the best. 

Rachael Herron: [00:58:10] So that’s what makes you so good at this particular job, at both of your job, the writing and the coaching 

Becca Syme: [00:58:13] Yes. More so probably in the coaching, because like that particular feeling is something you can’t get from anything else, other than hearing your own words back, you resonate on like literally every level of yourself resonates. When you hear the thing that you’ve said to yourself that you assume makes you weird, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:58:34] Yes. Oh my gosh, Becca, I could talk to you for four more hours but we can’t, we’re running out of time. But I would love you to tell us, so where, tell us about your most recent novel and then tell us where we can find the academies. 

Becca Syme: [00:58:50] So my, my, let’s do the Academy first because that’s easy. I always suggest that people go to the Quit Cast 

Rachael Herron: [00:58:56] Yes, I forgot to mention that-

Becca Syme: [00:58:57] Q-U-I-T C-A-S-T, on YouTube first and see if they resonate with stuff. Cause, and this is a- and I practice what I preach. If you don’t resonate with us, God bless you on your way. You are gonna do great without us. You’re fine. I’m absolutely a 100% happy for people to not come and check us out, but I always want to let them do it in a way that’s not threatening first, so that you don’t, I don’t know if you liked it or not. You can just come and check it out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:59:26] Just go, look at the podcast

Becca Syme: [00:59:26] So, come, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:59:28] That’s also a podcast form, right? Like I usually watch it

Becca Syme: [00:59:30] Not yet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:59:31] Okay. I usually watch it on YouTube. Great.

Becca Syme: [00:59:34] We’re working on the podcast. So, look for the QTP episodes of this stuff has resonated, because though we QTP everything, we’re like writer’s write, don’t edit as you go, you know, plan, plan your day, all that stuff, book a month, like all that stuff we QTP, again, not to say no one should do it. It’s the question whether you should or shouldn’t and so check out the QTP episodes for sure, so that’s the easy part. The fiction part, which is the fun part. That’s what I love. Like I just love fiction 

Rachael Herron: [01:00:08] You just like brightened up your whole soul just-

Becca Syme: [01:00:10] I did. Well, cause like, cause I was a fiction writer for fun, right, before I started doing it full time. 

Rachael Herron: [01:00:17] Yeah

Becca Syme: [01:00:18] And then I transitioned out of, out of like communications and success stuff into, into fiction full time in 2012. And then, and I did that for years before I got back into this again with writers. And so that’s really where my heart was. Like, I’ve always wanted to be a full time fiction writer, and so fiction is the thing that I do that makes me happy. And so I love it. And so the, the most recent and the most part I want to say this is, cause this title is the most fun title ever so the- the sixth book, I think in the Vangie series just came out in an anthology. The title of the book is called Vangie Vale and the Full Metal Fran, Japan. I love it and it’s a cozy culinary cozy, and it’s a travel cozy. So the travel cozy is in the passport to murder anthology. 

Rachael Herron: [01:02:21] Oh, fun. 

Becca Syme: [01:02:22] And it’ll be there until, I think December, January, something like that, but Vangie Vale and the Full Metal Fran, Japan, and it’s a travel cozy about her going to Canada to get away and go on vacation and of course, because she’s Vangie, murder follows her everywhere, wherever she goes. And so she does an investigation when she’s up there and the way that the convention is, because they’re the matchbaker, books. So she does a version of reading people’s behavior that helps her to predict what they’re going to want to eat. And so one of the things she does in the early books, that’s what her business is. It’s called Matchbakery. And so she’s matching people up with, you know, what they want and the woman in this book who dies. There’s a woman who loves Fran, Japan. And so 

Rachael Herron: [01:02:16] I’m already like obsessed and I don’t even usually read cozy, but that is, you have all the best ideas in there already.

Becca Syme: [01:02:23] It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. And, and like I said, they’re grim dark. So if you’re cozy fan be warned, like they do, they do get dark 

Rachael Herron: [01:02:31] I want- I want the darkness always. So that makes me even more excited

Becca Syme: [01:02:35] It’s fun. It’s really fun. I really liked it. So, but yeah, that’s the latest fiction. And- and then who knows what I’m going to be doing by the, when this comes out, I may have started a whole new genre who knows, like, that’s the learner, right? I’m like, I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, 

Rachael Herron: [01:02:53] Becca, honestly. Seriously, thank you so much for everything that you have done for me. Thank you for being on the show. I know my listeners are going to freak out when they hear this. So listeners do go over there to HowDoYouWrite.net and leave, leave a comment. Thank you, Becca, so, so, so, so much.

Becca Syme: [01:03:08] Thank you for having me. 

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

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

Poet, performer, and scholar Joshua Bennett is the author of the just released book of poetry, Owed, which speaks to the expansive range of registers within the world of Black aesthetics and experience: the joy, rage, love, terror, and awe that gives a world within a world all its shape and tenor.

He received his PhD in English from Princeton University, and is currently Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. His writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. His book Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020. His first work of narrative nonfiction, Spoken Word: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf. He lives in Boston. 

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 #198 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am thrilled that you are here with me today. Today, I am talking to the marvelous Joshua Bennett, who is a poet as well as many other kinds of writing that he does, he’s just an incredible person. I was really honored to get an early look at his new book Owed, and I can just guarantee you that you’re going to love the conversation. So stay tuned for that. This’ll be a quick recap because I’ve had some coffee. I feel kind of weird today going in a bunch of different directions, perhaps because I’m not going in a single direction. This week I turned in a final revision of Hush Little Baby, a good friend of mine, Carrie Luna, and I just chatted and she said, she’s working on her scalpel revision. And I love that. I was just doing my scalpel revision, which is that very last final making everything perfect. So I sent that in on Monday. I sent out to Patreon essay on Monday. And I started 3 new 90 Days to Done classes also on Monday. So this week has been about finishes and start, and its Thursday as I record this and I’m kind of tired, I’m kind of brain dead. I am excited to have the book off my plate for a little bit, and to go back into working on what I am calling now, You’re Already Ready. That’s the new title for replenish, working on that. 

[00:01:57] The news broke last week. I think I mentioned it in the show last week, but The Writers Well is no more. So J Thorn and I are not doing our podcast, The Writers Well anymore. We’re still besties. Everything is good, but it has been really nice to be hearing from people who loved the show, and I just wanted to thank you very sincerely for watching it. I guess you never watched it, it was always just audio, not like the show- for listening for years. For those of you who did it was really, really fun. Yeah. So mourning that a little bit, but not mourning the loss of J cause I’m gonna talk to him on Monday and he’s got lots of things to tell me, so that’s great. I wanted to quickly thank new patrons. Because what happened is The Writers Well, we closed it, but we had patrons over there and we invited people to come support us at our own Patreon, and some people have done that. I never expected it. And it is really, really nice. 

[00:02:54] So I would like to thank new patrons, Nicole Knightley, Rosie Radcliffe. I might’ve thanked you guys last week. Claire Chandler, upped her pledge. Thanks Claire. That’s so nice of you. Michelle Maida also upped her pledge. Thank you, Jeremy Neander who was a patron over at The Writers Well, thanks Jeremy. Amanda Ward. Thank you very much. Sue Roth edited her pledge up. Amazing. These two names are completely hidden from me. Oh, Kim Martin. Hello Kim. Thank you so much. And this one’s also a little bit hidden from me. Waname L. Spencer, thanks Waname. That’s amazing. Thank you so, so much everybody. If you ever want to look at what I’m offering, you can always go over to patreon.com/Rachael. There’s some cool things there. However, the thing that I’m always most excited about is those essays that I get to write and then put into collections of books and then get to share with you. So that is work. I really enjoy. 

[00:03:54] What else is going on around here? I went for a run this morning because J has been influencing me, and that he has become a runner. I used to be a runner. If you’re watching the YouTube video, you can see that I’m wearing my Honolulu marathon finisher shirt. I don’t wear this very often because I need this shirt to last by the rest of my life cause I’m never doing another marathon. I’ve done two, never doing another one. It was fabulous. The shirt I need to point out is old enough to have a driver’s license. It was 16 years ago that I did that marathon. I can’t believe that, I’m 48, so I was only 32. And there’s a part of me that’s saying, why are you trying to run? I just really, really like running. So I am starting out with something and I think J told me about this it’s called None to Run. Not a nun and a habit, but N-O-N-E, None to Run. It is a little bit slower than Couch to 5k, because I have tried to get back into running, using Couch to 5k apps, and they’re a little bit too fast and I ended up messing up my knees or shin splints. So None to Run is a little bit slower. And I tried it this morning and it was dang easy. I, I have to admit, I didn’t even break a sweat. So that’s an awesome way to run, to start getting back into it, even though there was some running, no sweating that will change. But, if anybody is thinking about getting into a running program, number one, consult your doctor.

[00:05:20] Number two, maybe none to run is for you just Google it. It will come right up. So without further ado, let’s get into this interview with Joshua, which I am so pleased and proud to bring you, like I said, this book blew me away. I usually only read two or three books of poetry a year. Cause I’m so intimidated by poetry and because it moves me so much, I’m a little bit scared of it, honestly. And I kind of show that in this interview, you will hear me kind of displaying that. The caution that I feel around the incredibly huge surges of emotion and meaning that can come through poetry in a way that is, I believe, inaccessible in other mediums. So have a good time with this interview. Thanks so much for listening and I wish you all very happy writing.

Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:58] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show. Joshua Bennett. Hello, Joshua, welcome.

Joshua Bennett: [00:07:02] Hi Rachael thanks for having me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:07:04] I am thrilled to have you. We share a publisher and my publisher sent me your book and it blew me away. I spent an evening lost in it, so I’m so glad that you’re here and you’re gonna share a little bit with us, but I’ll give you an introduction first and then we’ll start chatting. A poet, performer and scholar Joshua Bennett is the author of the just released book of poetry, Owed, which speaks to the expansive range of registers within the world of Black aesthetics and experience: the joy, rage, love terror, and all that gives a world within a world, all the shape and tenor. He received his PhD in English from Princeton University, and is currently Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth. His writing has been published in the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review Poetry and elsewhere. His book Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and The End of Man was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020. His first work of narrative nonfiction Spoken Word: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf and he lives in Boston. You ha- let’s start off with, you’ve had a really frickin’ busy year. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:08:12] Yeah, you know, there’s a lot going on. 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:14] There’s a lot going on. And did I read- and something that the publisher sent me that are you about to have a baby? 

Joshua Bennett: [00:08:20] Yeah. In the next couple of weeks.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:22] Oh my goodness. So you’ve had two books come out, one forthcoming a baby on the way, a global pandemic, the country in racial uprising. And you speaking to that, like how, how are you doing, today? Let’s not talk about how are you doing, but how are you doing like today. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:08:40] Yeah. I’m all right today. Today I’m preparing, you know, start teaching in two weeks, yeah right. A little bit now getting ready to teach this modern black American literature class, getting my son’s nursery ready. I mean, so there’s, there’s like the real singular joy of that, and I just had a book come out yesterday. So there’s joy in the midst. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:10] Yeah, yeah. A beautiful, beautiful, important book. Would you read us a poem from it please?

Joshua Bennett: [00:09:16] Of course. So this poem is a favorite of mine in part just during the pandemic. I think one of the things that I’ve missed most is barbershops. So this is barber 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:25] I love this one. Yes.

Joshua Bennett: [00:09:28] Barbara song, postmodern blackness blacksmith, straight razor reshaping, self-esteem, huge dream in geometries unreachable by any other means. Speak and entire phrases abandoned standard American etymology hence, you liberate waves from the sea. Corn rows from the corn field reclaim fade. So I now hear the word and imagine only abundance. Caesar never meant anything to me, but a cut so close, you could see the shimmer of a man’s thinking. You are how we first learned to bend language built to unmake us except implausible risks. Some much older man, shaver in hand like a baton full of laughs gossip asking with the grain or against, and the question feels damn near existential. Given this is the only place we can live, in such thoughtless proximity to another person’s open hands, be held by the face. Ask outright to be made glamorous shaped by your polymathic brilliance. You biweekly psychoanalyst first stopped before funeral, before wedding and block party alike. You, soothsayer cooing children to calm, as they sit in the chair for the first time, as still as storm, as one might reasonably expect. You, ethicist defending hairlines at all costs, your vigilance keeping online and otherwise slander at bay. Philosopher king, the source in the drawer. Domino’s and scotch and barbasol adorning your counter top, right above the chorus line of clippers swaying to the clamor of checkmates and offhand insults now filling the shop. Each moving as if the unfettered locks of some great metal monster, some far away watcher and you, guardian of it all clean as a Pope.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:29] Listener so what just happened to your brain, is what happens to your brain when you read this book Owed. I live in East Oakland and there’s a black barbershop, like just the end of my block. And it’s called the Pull Up Your Pants Barbershop. And he will, he will give you a belt if you walk in without a belt. It’s- it’s but, and it’s obviously, obviously not my place. It is not a place for me to partake in any of this. So, so actually getting to listen to your voice makes me feel like I do when I walk past like real slowly with my ear open, just because it, it, it strikes me as this magical poets, poet scholar, Pope, place of learning. So that’s, that’s gorgeous. So you as a writer, the show is about writing as process and finding our process in the midst of life. You do so many things. How do you get the damn writing done? That’s what I would like to know. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:12:29] Well, that’s a great question

Rachael Herron: [00:12:30] And knowing that everything might change in two weeks when you have a baby and you’re teaching.

Joshua Bennett: [00:12:33] For sure. I mean, yeah. I mean, I’ve just been going hard every single day. I mean I write every day if not a poem, a line, an idea, a grant proposal something, I mean, I always try to get just language on the page usually for a long time I wrote at the dining room table behind me, but my wife asked me to stop doing that. So I’m just going to stop doing that. I have stopped doing it, hi honey, in case you’re listening later. Right now, 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:52] No okay, let me ask you, why did she stop doing it, was it because of the faces you would make when you did it, or do you talk to the computer or- 

Joshua Bennett: [00:13:00] That’s a great question. No, I mean, she’s great with this. I mean the dining table is for eating. So I think she just has tried to help me organize my base around it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:14] Yeah

Joshua Bennett: [00:13:15] She’s like, don’t write during meals, I get, you know, this is- you can rest sometimes, you can watch TV, you can read the pleasure and all that kind of stuff. So no, I just do my best to write every day and I just try to make music out of it. You know, whether it’s something I overhear someone saying in a restaurant historically, or there’s a passage in the book, you know, that really resonates with me like almost all the titles of my books, for instance come from passages of thinkers that matter a lot to me. So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:44] So you write narrative nonfiction, you write nonfiction, literary criticism, and poetry. What I, I, I’m, I’m leading the witness, but what, how’s your heart the most? Is it poetry or is it something else? Or I know it’s like, you know, which kid is your favorite? But- 

Joshua Bennett: [00:14:01] That’s tough. I mean life is not tough, I mean it’s tough to say maybe because we’re not supposed to outright state preferences like this in some ways, but no, I mean, poetry will always be my home genre. It’ll always be my heart in no small part because it was first, you know, sort of the first, poets I ever saw were preachers. And I still regard that as a certain form of poetry. One of my favorite thinker, Hortense Spillers, brilliant black feminist, critical theorists. I found her dissertation about two years ago. And in the beginning she makes this argument that a black preacher and the plantation were sort of the first poets of the black community. And so it was this incredible moment thinking that against my own childhood and my own upbringing. And whenever I feel like the criticism or the nonfiction is dry or the language isn’t there, I always turn to the poems to electrify and to bring it back to life. So, it’s, it’s a, I’m a, I’m a poet first and foremost, you know, 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] I have, I have a hero worship of poets if that’s not already coming through because I am not a poet. And even when I was in grad school, the one poetry class they made us take, right, you had to do one outside your, your, your major. And I remember them telling me, you know, you just, you can’t write fiction in a poem. There’s gotta be some poetry in there. So, so, and so when someone does it as beautifully as you do, it’s just really inspiring to me. So thank you for sharing that. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing of any type?

Joshua Bennett: [00:15:28] The biggest challenge I have when it comes to writing of any type. It’s funny I was asked the question like this recently and I feel bad. I don’t, it is, it feels good. I don’t know. I mean, I guess the challenge of writing for me soon will be time for sure. But if I can be, be completely honest. I mean, writing has been such an intimate part of my life for as long as I can remember. I mean since I was about four or five years old. I wrote short stories. I wrote poems. I improvised sermons off the top of my head and I was in a really tight knit super weird family culture, where people need space for all that stuff. I don’t listen to the whole 40 minutes of the improvise sermon of the seven-year-old boy. They would gather around me in the dining room and they would just let me go. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:13] How beautiful is that? 

Joshua Bennett: [00:16:14] It’s incredible! No, definitely, yeah great notes, you know, in parenting very early that experience. But it was, I mean, in one way it was a kind of countervailing narrative, right? So the school system, I was a part of where I was told when I was five, I would never function in the classroom. You know, that my day dreaming was a problem. But then in the home space, my parents really just kind of left me alone and they were like, Josh is writing, you know, I’m a little boy, five, six years old right. And so for me writing is that, it’s a liberatory space, you know, I think I have an issue like we all do with kind of putting it out into the world sometimes, but the actual writing itself, I’m very comfortable with it not being good. If I can be completely honest. I have poems that just- they’re not swinging, you know, everything doesn’t swing that you put on the page and that, that’s fine. And I, I really mean that. And that’s, that’s made a, a big difference as I get older and have to go through a bunch of drafts to get to something like this book, you know, I’m, I’m acquainted with it and that it doesn’t scare me. You know, the page is home. 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:14] Yeah. The page is home failure to me. Doesn’t matter on the page. It’s the, it’s the repeated process of going back. I, I, I eat failure for breakfast cause I fail basically every single day and every couple of, couple of days I get a line or two that’s okay. You know? What it is, so along those lines, you probably already, you’ve just described some joy, but what’s your, what’s your biggest joy, if you had to name it when it comes to writing?

Joshua Bennett: [00:17:37] Yeah. I mean, the biggest joy for me is, well, actually let me think about this from a slightly different angle. Recently, it’s actually been the real life discovery as something that might become a poem later. So for example, my wife and I are doulas named perpetual.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:51] Oh my gosh, that’s a novel, there’s a whole novel right there. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:17:54] Right. And the moment she said her name, it wasn’t that, Oh, I’m going to put this in a poem. It was just the nature of the interaction and the revelation and even the kind of doula she is. I think seeing that story unfold in real time and felt like it was giving me another instrument to write with whether or not that actual detail ever gotten a poem, right? Like there was something that was happening. I felt like it was all threads in the universe coming together in a certain kind of way. So I think that’s the joy of writing for me is having a moment where I feel like my writerly imagination adds a little spice to my actual phenomenological experience. You know, that that’s been part for me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:32] So putting all those pieces together, inside a life. Yeah. What, what is the thing- is there a thing in your life that affects your writing in a surprising way? Maybe, maybe your wife telling to move the computer 

Joshua Bennett: [00:18:45] Yeah right, to go, go relax. Yeah I mean, being in level won’t do it. I mean, I think the realization that being smart is not the most important thing in the world.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:58] Don’t tell me that, no. I reject, no.

Joshua Bennett: [00:19:02] I kid you not, I just got there like a year ago, maybe a couple months, really. And I think, I think for me it was a defensive posture for most of my life. Right. That it was a weapon again, largely that my mother had kind of honed in me. Right. You have to be bright. You have to be eloquent, and this for you as a way to move through the world, it’s a kind of armor against narratives will project onto you. And ways that people will try to hurt you. Right. And a part of what I think happened is that becoming a writer, and a scholar, I internalized a defensive posture and I made it a kind of mission to just be, you know, the brightest to sharpest, most rigorous and it’s just not, that’s just not the measure of a human life and I think in part through my relationship with my wife and my close friends and colleagues, I think I’ve found various other strands of a human experience that just mean a great deal to me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:55] This is a, this is an intimate question, but do you think you would have come to the same realization if you hadn’t and please forgive me for saying this, but like made it PhD from Princeton, like you’re teaching at Dartmouth, you’ve got all these, like, would you have come there if you were still struggling to get there? 

Joshua Bennett: [00:20:11] Maybe not, that’s a great sort of material conditions question. Yeah. I mean, I think it was really when I got here to Harvard, if I can be honest, and it was in the society of fellows, this kind of elite group within an elite group, you know. These 12 people selected every year from all across the world to eat together for three years and write books and I’m with paleontologists and astronomers who we’re eating together three times a week, and I think just the realization that what made me happiest was actually getting to know these people, I’m in so many ways and just it was the sharing of the ideas again. It almost really felt like being a kid and when you’re on the playground and no one has money, so you trade skills. Like I was fairly good at telling time and my best friend, Danny was really good at helping me not get beat up, you know, and we kind of exchanged you know, those goods and that was the foundation of our friendship for a while as mutual aid. And the understanding that we need each other. So, yeah, I mean, I think especially my success as a, as a young professional scholar and writer helped me realize, and actually even before that, when I was doing the spoken word stuff and touring the world and was financially independent and was getting stopped on the street and it was at the white house, I mean, the night I performed at the white house, I sort of sat alone in my hotel room as a 20-year-old and realized, you know, this can’t be all that I do. Like, I kind of hit the pinnacle of my career as a 20-year-old and I realized there had to be something else. And I think that was, I’m really thankful for that every single day being famous on the internet or well-known is not a, it just can’t be the end all be all, because there’s really nothing in that, that will sustain you.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:44] It’s pretty great that you got that early and not, you know, when you were 72 and you know. So are you still friends with those Harvard 12 that you were with? 

Joshua Bennett: [00:21:54] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There’s 36 of us in total and every year maybe 12, but yeah, no, I’m, I’m cool with the other junior fellows. People are very sweet and, you know, we keep up with each other on Facebook and stuff, so people know that the baby’s on the way. And it’s good 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:10] Such an interesting image to me. Can you- moving back to writing, can you share any kind of craft tip with us? Any craft tip.

Joshua Bennett: [00:22:17] A craft tip. Yeah. Just really read books, you know, so again, this is actually part of my ongoing issue as a, as a self-taught person, you know, is that I didn’t come through an MFA program. I came up through poetry slam and through reading books. That’s how I learned how a line should look on the page. How it should sound, the kind of subject matter that compels me to sit down and write, it comes from those experiences. You know? And so for me, when I, you know, cause I teach both creative writing and sort of literary theory at Dartmouth and I’m always telling my students, of course your, your feelings can be a sort of primary impetus to get to the page, but why wouldn’t sort of historical research or these other narratives outside of you sort of get the texture and tenor and shape and form. It’s what we’re doing to give it stakes, right? To make sure there’s blood in it and that’s the best craft advice I think I’ve gotten, that’s the best craft advice I’ve given, the best craft advice I’ve got is from Gregory Pardlo, who told me to use all of my Englishes. And I think him telling me that felt like permission to use both the kind of theoretical language of the Academy and the vernacular language. That is really how I sound in my head. I just didn’t feel like those could ever collide in a meaningful way. I was always worried it would feel performative or that I would, it wouldn’t be a good representation of the race or something. If I wasn’t writing in a particular way, every time I sat down and I feel like Greg helps liberate me from that.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:48] I was just gonna say, what a liberation. Yeah.

Joshua Bennett: [00:23:50] Yeah, the teachers would do that.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:52] Yeah. So speaking of books, what I always liked to like narrow things down to, you know, an essential one, what’s the best book we read recently? And recently it can be in the last, you know, five years, but, but what is the book you want to tell us about.

Joshua Bennett: [00:24:06] The book I want to tell you all about, well that’s tough. Cause I write about this in my new books are, I spent so much time with it, but probably Song of Solomon about Toni Morrison. I mean, that’s a book I always talk to people about just because it was so transformative for my life. It changed the way I thought about masculinity, about love and care about religion, about parenthood. If I can be completely frank and redemption, there are so many different kinds of redemption happening in that book and Morrison doesn’t really let us go. She doesn’t let us off the hook. Another really good book that I read last week is The Voice of the Children Anthology that June Jordan put together, in the early seventies. She used to host a workshop for children at church of the open door in Brooklyn. And I anthologize all their work at the end of the year. And I was just sitting down with these poems I mean one was written by a girl named Vanessa Howard, who I think might have been 14 or 15 years old. It’s called Monument in Black. And it’s just this gorgeous opening stanza about putting her parents on money, it was like, put my father’s black- what is it? It’s like, put my father’s black smile on the penny or something, I think is the opening. And it’s just this, I don’t know. It’s just a gorgeous image to me because she doesn’t even want, she doesn’t even make a radical move to say there are historical figures that are under studied and that should be on the currency. It’s like about everyday people you know, those are her heroes. It’s the people on her block, the people at her home. So that’s an incredible book those-

Rachael Herron: [00:25:34] Voices of the what? 

Joshua Bennett: [00:25:36] Voices of the Children

Rachael Herron: [00:25:37] Voices of the Children Great.

Joshua Bennett: [00:25:38] Yeah, yeah. It’s great.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:41] I’ll put the link in the show notes for that. Okay. So will you tell us now about number one, where we can find you on the internet and number two, tell us a little bit about Owed.

Joshua Bennett: [00:25:49] Yeah. Yeah. You can-

Rachael Herron: [00:25:50] How you came out. How that, how that all came together. Sorry to interrupt you.

Joshua Bennett: [00:25:53] Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, you’re fine. You can find me on the internet mostly. I do most of my thinking out loud on Twitter. So @SirJoshBennett, that’s also my Instagram handle (SirJoshBennett) and then I have a Facebook fan page, you could just find by searching Joshua Bennett poet Facebook. (PoetJoshuaBennett) How did Owed come about? Well, one stormy night, 2016. Yeah, I was at the comic con retreat, actually, this is really what happened and it might’ve been stormy that night. The comic con retreat in 2016, and I had Willie Perdomos workshop the next day, so part of how comic con works, and I don’t think I’m giving away too many trade secrets here, but you have to write and write a new poem every day. I was sitting down and I’ve been in a kind of old space, like a celebratory space in the writing. And I knew I wanted to write a poem about my big sister, and everything she taught me, which was everything from how to write and read, to how to fight and how to do long division. So I wanted to get that all onto the page and it became not just about celebrating my sister and that occasion, but what was owed to her, right. It felt like Owed was actually a way of traversing that space between my love for her and this tremendous debt that I felt like I- I’d owed this woman who helped shape my life. And also the little girl who helped shape my life, you know, when we were both little kids. And so that’s how it began. The first quote I wrote was owed pedagogy, it’s the second poem in the book. And then from there, I just thought about it as a larger project. What would it look like to create an aesthetics of reparation or to contribute to it rather, right, and invent this stuff, but, but my idea was that, that’s of course, think about physical reparations as the material redistribution of wealth, but what about the kind of soul work? The symbolic work, the literary work that has to be done alongside that, to really counteract all the negative images of blackness that we all inherit. Right. And then we all internalize, right? So I wanted to think about that as, as my contribution through this book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:46] And you do such a gorgeous job of doing this with your father too, and he’s kind of this touch stone all the way through. He’s even on the cover, that he’s the one holding you, right?

Joshua Bennett: [00:27:56] Yeah, yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:27:57] It’s- and you know, what’s really embarrassing, I’m just going to admit this to you right now, is this is so much of a poetry lover and a non-poetry understander that I am, I didn’t understand until you were just saying these things out loud, that Owed is a play on words.

Joshua Bennett: [00:28:10] Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:11] I only saw it as O-W-E-D. So I would like to share that with the listeners, if you’re just listening in your car, it’s not O-D-E, which makes absolute sense. But the, the play on that is so gorgeous and then ending the book with your father too. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:28:26] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:28:27] What a, what a, what a gift this book is. Thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for speaking so openly. And the book just came out yesterday, may it fly from the virtual shelves. I hope that you’re having a wonderful time promoting it, and I hope that you’re getting the praise that is your due 

Joshua Bennett: [00:28:47] Thank you, Rachael, that means a lot. Thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:50] Well, you’re welcome. Good- I’m so excited for your son too. Welcome to him!

Joshua Bennett: [00:28:55] Yeah!

Rachael Herron: [00:28:56] Welcome to him when he gets here! I’m gonna go stalk you on Instagram just so I can see pictures of that. 

Joshua Bennett: [00:29:01] Sure! No, no, I’ll be posted up. I’m gonna have a little baby and he’s going to be in the front and I’m going to be annoying. I can’t wait. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:07] Please be annoying. There’s nothing like Instagram is for cute dog pics and babies. That’s what is for.

Joshua Bennett: [00:29:12] And baby. Yeah. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:14] Thanks Joshua so much.

Joshua Bennett: [00:29:18] It’s a pleasure.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:19] 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.