Archives for December 2020

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

December 20, 2020

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

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

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Transcript

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

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #208 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Absolutely thrilled that you’re here today because we are talking to C.J. Cooke who wrote a book called The Nesting, which blew my damn mind, it’s a really excellent representation of gothic horror, or gothic thriller really straddles the line there. And it scared me and it kept me up and it most of all put me into a place where I usually am not. In the snow, in the cold, and it was really, really, really beautifully written and kept me on the edge of my seat so I was so thrilled to talk to CJ about this. What happens sometimes, and you’ve heard me talk about this before, is that publishers will reach out to me and ask me to talk to some of their writers and I will say yes to the ones that I’m interested in and no to the ones I am not. And I was interested in CJ and I got the net galley version, so I could read it on my Kindle.

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

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

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

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

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

[00:08:24] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

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

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

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

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

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:09:42] Yay

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:09:50] Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:17:04] Oh, wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:19:45] Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:21:20] Yeah

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

Rachael Herron: [00:22:03] Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:24:29] Yeah

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

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:26:05] Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:27:47] Yeah.

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:28:31] Yeah

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

Rachael Herron: [00:28:35] Yeah.

C. J. Cooke: [00:28:36] So

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:29:37] Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:31:52] I agree.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:53] Hits

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

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

C. J. Cooke: [00:32:02] Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:34:02] You too.

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

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

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

December 20, 2020

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

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #207 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so thrilled that you’re here today. Today, we are talking to Donna Baier Stein about her surprising tip for getting into the voice of a character. It was really, really fun to talk to her and the way she mixes art and writing. And I know that you are going to enjoy that portion of the podcast and what’s been going on around here. Well, I have been writing my Patreon essay, which is about to go out and I know that I have told you, the past that I’m writing this memoir called You’re Already Ready. It was called Replenish, and it was the result of me burning out at the end of 2017. I decided to take 2018 to do a month- sorry, a year-long challenge. Every month would be a different challenge, I would focus on one different thing and see if it could help replenish my empty well. Well, what ended up happening, was completely unexpected and it happened exactly at the inciting incident wherein right about 20% through that year because of what I was doing and because of the journaling I was doing, I discovered that I had slipped into alcoholism, which was my biggest fear of my life. One of my biggest fears. And it had happened, after many years of being a heavy drinker, I was no longer able to stop drinking. So I continued to write those monthly essays for my Patreon subscribers, and they were true and real and honest, and they told the way I felt, but I kept all mentioned of my recovery out of them. We’re just going to have to ignore that cat; who’s yelling in the background. I apologize for that. That’s what he does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donna Baier Stein: [00:09:38] Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donna Baier Stein: [00:16:29] Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:19:54] Oh, wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:20:46] Yes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donna Baier Stein: [00:23:33] Yes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donna Baier Stein: [00:26:24] Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Donna Baier Stein: [00:27:57] Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:29:03] Oh I’m so-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:32:45] Oh wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachael Herron: [00:34:44] Thank you.

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

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

December 20, 2020

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers.

Transcript

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 206 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased you’re here today is a mini episode where I answer your patron questions. I didn’t have any, and suddenly I have a bunch. So, I will try to go through these as quickly as possible because it’s supposed to be a mini episode, but I want to make sure that you get your questions answered. So let’s jump right in. This will be nice I’ll release this episode today and then a new regular episode tomorrow. I must say really quickly that I apologize that I missed a week, which I was cool with. And then I missed another week because I forgot to upload it to the app. I did upload it on YouTube. If you follow me on YouTube, the Vicki Pettersson episode was live on the day it was supposed to, but a week later a couple of people reached out and said, I hope you’re okay. You’ve missed two weeks with no explanation and I thought, oh no, no I haven’t. And I had, cause I had just forgotten the most important step of putting it on the podcast feed app, that distributed, distributes the show to you. So I do apologize for that, in order to make up for that last week, you got two episodes in one day. Today you’ll get one and tomorrow you’ll get another one. So I hope that that helps and thanks for checking in on me. I really appreciate it. And it’s the only way that I knew that I didn’t upload the episode was because of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ep. 205: Kati Gardner on Planning for Writers

December 20, 2020

Kati Gardner is a recovering actor, wife, and mom. She is a childhood cancer survivor and amputee who writes books about disability and kissing. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives and writes in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’s the author of Brave Enough and Finding Balance. You can find her on Twitter at @AuthorKati or on Instagram at AuthorKatiGardner.

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

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 205 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re here with me today. Today, we are talking to Kati Gardner and she is a delight. We talk about planning for writers. We talk a little bit about planners for those of you with a planner addiction like we have. We talk about how she wrote a book and then put it away and rewrote it and I’m always fascinated by that process. I’ve actually done it once myself and I always forget that. And she’s just so great to talk to, we go on little writing related tangents and I loved her energy. So you will enjoy this show. What’s going on around here? Well, I think I mentioned our dog is feeling better, so we’re not leaving the country immediately. It’s fantastic. You might even hear her snoring over that shoulders, the little dog and the bigger dog is behind me, possibly snoring and feeling better so that’s fantastic. We’re still moving forward with going to New Zealand. It’s just that we get to take our time and that’s a nice feeling.

[00:01:26] What else? Oh, I finished my copy edits for Hush Little Baby and turn those in, so that book is off my desk entirely. I will probably have to look at proofs and I really hate looking at proofs. I never see, and I am not a person who can see my own typos. So when they ask you to check the proofs, to make sure the proofreader caught the errors that the copy editor misses and yes, the copy editor will miss things. And guess what? The proofer will also miss things. No book is perfect when it is printed, unfortunately. And, the author’s job is usually to look at that again and check for errors and they never see them. So that will be the last time I touch it. But hey, I swear to you. I honestly touch, I barely, barely look at it, I barely touch it. Just can’t stand it. I am at the point of not being able to stand this book and that’s great. That is where I exactly where I should be when I send it out forever. I really won’t see it again until it comes out in May, I believe, I think that is the month it comes out. So that will be fun, and in the meantime, I’ve been working a little bit on You’re Already Ready and working quite a lot of bit on planning my NaNoWriMo novel, which is going to be super fun to write. I wrote quite a bit last year in NaNoWriMo, but I actually didn’t end up ever using those words anywhere. It kind of threw those out. So this year I would like to have NaNo be something that I can use and that I have really planned for. So that is fun.

[00:02:59] I wanted to tell you something else. Oh, if you’re watching on the video, I have wet hair and I just have to say that for the very first time I crossed the bay, in my car, drove through San Francisco out to aquatic park in the middle of the day. And when swimming in the Bay there, I have, I have been swimming a couple of times here in the East Bay, over in Berkeley, and I find it, it feels a little treasure, treacherous and scary to me because where I go, you can jump off the dock, but there’s no way back up the dock, unless you pay the $18 and swim with this swimming club on Sundays and they’re all very, very serious. Capital S, capital S for serious swimmers and I am not as serious swimmer. I am a paddler who swims really hard for a while, and then I get tired and then I bob around, like a little sea otter and over at aquatic park, there are always people swimming. It is also 10 degrees colder than it is over here in the East Bay, but that’s okay. I have a wetsuit, even though the people who swim there on a daily basis, the people who are members of the 250-year-old swimming clubs there, even though they mock the people with wetsuits. No, I put my feet in that and my hands in that and my head in that. And I thought I am so glad my body is not feeling this cold and I, for the very first time today, I really appreciated the wetsuit. Before I’ve always thought, is it really helping? Oh, it is helping. It is helping a lot. So I had a wonderful time doing that and it was pushing a boundary for me. To go swimming by myself, over in San Francisco where all of these excellent swimmers are swimming and it was wonderful. I feel really good. And I am nice and toasty warm now. So I am headed into RachaelSaysWrite, because it is Thursday afternoon. It is so fun to write with these people. So if you have considered joining us for Rachel Says Write, you can always look at, where is it? RachaelHerron.com/RachaelSaysWrite I believe is where I put it. And we write together for two hours and I haven’t gotten any writing done yet today. As has been happening lately on Thursdays, because I know that I have this solid two-hour block to write with other people on zoom. And for some reason I always write so much more there than I do any other place or any other time.

[00:05:32] I just like writing with companionship. So I’m headed there now and I will let you head right over into the interview with Kati. Please enjoy. I hope you’re enjoying your own writing. Drop me a line somewhere anywhere and tell me how you are doing. And I wish you really, really excellent, happy writing. We’ll talk soon.

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

Rachael Herron: [00:06:24] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Kati Gardner. Hello, Kati.

Kati Gardner: [00:06:28] Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:30] I am thrilled to have you. We were introduced by the amazing Becca Syme, who everybody knows.

Kati Gardner: [00:06:38] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:39] I’m Becca nation all the way. Right?

Kati Gardner: [00:06:42] I, I told her I was all in. I was like, I am all in on this.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] Are you a member of her Patreon, by the way?

Kati Gardner: [00:06:48] A-huh. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:50] Because that thing she sent out today was amazing. Amazing.

Kati Gardner: [00:06:52] So good. Like I have to read some of that stuff a couple of times.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:56] I know. Because she’s so smart.

Kati Gardner: [00:06:58] Yeah. And I

Rachael Herron: [00:06:59] And that stuff was so deep.

Kati Gardner: [00:07:00] Yes. Yeah. Like I only got to read it once and it was while I was sitting at the salon or at my hairdresser’s house. So I need to like, sit down again and go through it because it just always, I’m always like, yes. Why, why didn’t I think of this, is where I’m at, most of the time.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:14] You know, it’s because we’re busy not thinking of that. And she isn’t.

Kati Gardner: [00:07:18] No.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:18] But, you know what? We’re not here to talk about her today. We’re here to talk about you. So let me give you a little bit of an introduction. Kati Gardner is a recovering actor, wife, and mom. She is a childhood cancer survivor and amputee who writes books about disability and kissing. And we had to hurriedly, I had to hardly hit record cause you were like, I just want to write about one of my good girls and kissing.

Kati Gardner: [00:07:41] That’s it. That’s all I wanted to hear.

Rachael Herron: [00:07:45] Fabulous. Continuing, originally from Atlanta, she now lives and writes in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’s the author of Brave Enough and Finding Balance, which is coming out soon. You can find her at Twitter @AuthorKati or at Instagram @AuthorKatiGardner. When is, Finding Balance coming out?

Kati Gardner: [00:08:02] Tuesday.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:03] Oh my gosh.

Kati Gardner: [00:08:04] Yeah. September 29th.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:06] Oh. So by the time this is out, it will be out and people will be able to grab it. And you’re cut. We were just talking about how you won the cover lottery with your publisher. They are gorgeous books, and I love that. So talk to us a little bit about your writing process. Like, how? Is it your mom? How do you get everything done?

Kati Gardner: [00:08:23] I don’t. That’s, like, that’s just, I was talking with some other, we, we call ourselves the “overworked writing moms” and, I was talking with them and like, we, we use the, the Nora Roberts analogy with the glass bubbles and or the glass balls

Rachael Herron: [00:08:42] Oh yes. I’ve heard this. Can you say it again if you can remember it?

Kati Gardner: [00:08:45] If I can remember it, like the, some, some balls you’re, you’re juggling all of the balls

Rachael Herron: [00:08:50] Yes

Kati Gardner: [00:08:52] and some are glass and if they drop, we’ll break and some are plastic and they won’t break and so it’s figuring out which ones you can drop, which ones are plastic and which ones are glass. It, it turns out that our children are glass all the time. Always.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:05] This is why I have no children.

Kati Gardner: [00:09:07] You’re dropping off the children. And my, my kids are older now, like when they were younger and demanded just, you know, constant supervision and the ‘please don’t eat that cause you will die’ phase. It was harder. They’re older now. Now I spend a lot of my time going ‘No you’ve spent enough time on the iPad. Let’s find something else that’s creative to do’. And now, because we are, where we’re at North Carolina, we’re virtual schooling this year. And so I find myself, I like to say, I’m the bell system. So I’m constantly like, okay, now it’s time for you to go to literacy and you need to go to math. And those kinds of like, I, I’m the bell system and I’m IT. So if the wi-fi goes out, I’m the one that has to fix it or if somebody can’t get into their Google meet or, you know, those types of things, that’s my job.

Rachael Herron: [00:09:54] That sounds so difficult like, and, and I’ll just say that we live right by a high school and it’s been really strange because it’s been, you know, we haven’t had high school in a long time, but the bell system, they never turned off, they’ve never turned it off in April. So it’s been going, it went all summer and it rings every 45 minutes or whatever. And then it rings the 5 and 10 and I’m like, bells are very busy things. So you’re constantly doing something.

Kati Gardner: [00:10:17] Yeah. Yeah. You’re, I’m, I’m, I’m a busy person with the bell system. I did, my older daughter is in middle school. So like I can set her alarms on her various devices and it reminds her of what class she needs to go to. My younger one is only in elementary school, so it just, just requires that, are you actually in class? You know, like it just a little more reminding and I’m a, I’m a former educator. So, you know, it’s one of those things like I find my teacher voice coming back, which I haven’t used in 11 years. So I’m like, you know, that it’s, it’s a little weird cause I’m using it on my children. And I taught middle school. So now that I have a middle-schooler, like it’s, it’s all of those things. It’s, it’s fun. It’s fine. What I have learned also with my writing is that it has to be a priority. Like it can’t be something that I say, okay, I’ll get to this later. And so I find what I, what I found eventually, like when the, when the pandemic first hit in April, I couldn’t write anything. I just sat there and I would stare at screens and I would doom scroll, like we do. Lots of doom scrolling and that was fine because I didn’t, I didn’t have any contracts. I didn’t have any deadlines. I was literally just writing stuff for me for the first time in a really long time, which was really lovely. And so I just did it. I had finished a, a manusc- a draft, a really rough, terrible, terrible, terrible draft in January. And so I just was like, I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna let that sit. I’m just gonna think on it. I’m just going to let it do its thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:11:57] That sounds healthy

Kati Gardner: [00:12:58] Yeah. And then, so I just, I did. And, I guess, may, I was like, you know what, you know, manuscript, not the one you just finished, but that one you shelved, like a year ago, go get that and rewrite it from scratch. And that’s what I did. So I rewrote that one from scratch and I kept thinking, okay, I think it’s going to top out at 50,000 words, which is really short for a YA novel. And then I was like, no, it ended up, it’s like an 82,000 right now with, and that’s with a round of revisions. And I was like, I was supposed to cut words, not add.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:39] And that’s pretty long for a YA, right?

Kati Gardner: [00:12:40] It, it, well, especially because I write contemporary, like they want contemporaries between 60, 80 if you’re like, you know, Sarah Dessen or Angie Thomas, like they can, they can get away with longer novels. I just can’t right now. So it’ll, I know of some things that I’m already going to cut. It’s with my critique partners right now. So I’m going to just, I’m trying not to touch it, which is really hard to do because I know the things, you know, like once you know some of the things you’re going to fix, you wanna get

Rachael Herron: [00:13:09] You feel it in your gut. Yeah. Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:13:11] Yeah. But, for right now I’m really trying to leave it alone. One of the things that I leaned into a lot when I was writing that, was my activator strength, that’s my number two strength.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:23] Ooh, that’s a good one. That’s my number 10.

Kati Gardner: [00:13:25] It’s my number two. No, it’s my number one. Activator’s number one. Number two is woo. That’s it. And so number, number one is activator. I leaned into that really hardcore in that, I got up before everybody else in my house. And I wrote, like I didn’t do anything else. I made coffee because you can’t function without that. So I got up, I made myself a cup of coffee, and I wrote, and I would usually get about an hour, an hour and a half before anybody else got up. And I found that that was enough time, like I didn’t need any more time from the day to get the words that I needed. And I also, I discovered, so Brave Enough was an NaNoWriMo novel. I wrote that, yeah, which is coming up. So I’m big, big on those do that, do NaNoWriMo. I, but I didn’t like prep for it at all. I didn’t know that I was a plotter when I was writing Brave Enough, which is why it took me four and a half years to write it. That and I had a baby and moved.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:34] Small things.

Kati Gardner: [00:14:35] Small things. You know, the two most stressful things you can put in yourself on yourself.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:38] Exactly.

Kati Gardner: [00:14:39] So it, it, it took me a really long time to just finish the initial draft of Brave Enough. But I didn’t, because I didn’t know where I was going. Like, there’re some parts that I’ve cut out of that novel that like belongs somewhere else.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:55] Not in that book.

Kati Gardner: [00:14:56] Not in that book. The original draft, I think, was like over a hundred thousand words and the printed version is like 65. So, yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:06] Wow.

Kati Gardner: [00:15:07] There’s, yeah. But what I learned when I wrote Finding Balance is that I’m a, I am a plotter. Like I need, not only am I a plotter, I need to know what I’m going to sit down and write each day before I sit down. Like, so, I take my day planner. I am a planner person.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:23] I am a planner person too.

Kati Gardner: [00:15:25] Love. I, Franklin planned an Erin Condren. So I took several errand pieces from different Erin Condrens and then rebound them. So that it’s like exactly what I want.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:39] I’ve been digging into the iPad planners lately.

Kati Gardner: [00:15:42] I just-

Rachael Herron: [00:15:44] It’s mind blowing.

Kati Gardner: [00:15:46] We need to talk about this off, like off the podcast, because I got a new iPad and the iPad pencil for my birthday. And so I’ve been like looking at these like digital planners and I’m just trying to figure out how to make it work.

Rachael Herron: [00:15:57] Okay. Let’s talk about it on air because people love this too. This is a podcast about program and I will just tell you that I, I did so much research. I use the Good Notes app,

Kati Gardner: [00:16:06] Okay, I just got that.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:08] Perfect. And then you go to Etsy and it, the one, and you can look at all the digital planners that work for Good Notes. But most of them, most of them were for good notes, but I love the Emma studies, Emma studies on Etsy. She does the best, like, you know, I’ll just, I’ll just like, oh, you can’t really see my screen, but, it’s, it’s weird on the screen, but like, I keep like my gratitude list, my completed list. Tons of different, planning things, lots of things to color in, and you can pull anywhere on the internet. I’m obsessed. I’m like, I’ve been using this for maybe a month and a half and this particular Joe now has

Kati Gardner: [00:16:43] Okay

Rachael Herron: [00:16:44] like 75 pages in it just cause I’m constantly writing on it.

Kati Gardner: [00:16:46] Okay

Rachael Herron: [00:16:49] Oh, pro tip, get a matte screen protector for iPad itself because then it makes the pencil feel a little bit more realistic and you’re not just drawing on glass.

Kati Gardner: [00:16:54] I was gonna say, Okay. That’s, because that is something, my, and my other problem is my handwriting is terrible. So like,

Rachael Herron: [00:17:02] Good Notes will be able to read it. Being able to instantly search your notes, like, I, I was doing something with Becca the other day and I was looking for the word impulsivity and I just been scratching notes and I just searched impulsivity and it went to it, it could read it.

Kati Gardner: [00:17:16] Oh, that’s game changer right there. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to do that because I,

Rachael Herron: [00:17:20] Okay. So going back though, to your planner.

Kati Gardner: [00:17:22] Yeah. So I would write down every, like I would, so on Sunday afternoons I would take out, okay, so this is what I wrote this week, and this is what I want to write next week. And I would write down each day, like, okay, you’re going to write this scene. So I’m working on it. I was working on a heist novel. So like, okay, this day she’s going to steal the brooch.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:41] You actually know what’s coming up on the days that you’re writing. Wow.

Kati Gardner: [00:17:43] On the day that I’m writing it. And that helped me because then I wasn’t going to sit there because I was getting up so early. I wasn’t going to sit there in the dark and go, okay, where does, what’s? Where do I start? Like, I knew exactly where I was going to start. Sometimes I would leave myself like parenthesis in the, in the document itself. That would be like, okay, this is what you need to start here. But I found that if I wrote it down even a week before, it helped. Sometimes, because I do believe that, you know, like you, you discover these things as you’re writing and that you don’t want to ever ignore that. So some days I would get off, but it’d be like, okay, so I’m at this point now, but I still need to get to this point over here. Here’s the way I was doing it originally. Can I still make this work? in that kind of thing. So still having those notes was really helpful for me.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:36] I have such a happy, healthy jealousy of that. I would love to be a part of that, I always want to be a plotter. I want to be a plotter so bad

Kati Gardner: [00:18:43] I thought for a really long time that it would ruin it for me that like I would, like, oh, well, you know, the ending, but, but I write romances essentially.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:52] So we always know the ending.

Kati Gardner: [00:18:54] I mean, they’re gonna end up together and I’m the kind of writer I am like, I write about teens with disability and chronic illness, but the rule is nobody dies. So like,

Rachael Herron: [00:19:04] God.

Kati Gardner: [00:19:05] Yeah, so like, I know, I know two things already going into this, like there’s going to be a happy ending and nobody’s going to die. So like, those things are already solved for me. It’s fine if I, you know, plot it out. Cause originally I, when I first started writing years and years and years ago, like when I was writing fanfic I would be like, oh, I don’t want to know the ending because then I won’t be interested anymore. And really what I was losing interest in was either the fandom itself or the story. Like I had written myself into a hole of some sort, and I was just bored with what was happening. I either pushed, I am notorious for putting my two love, love interests together too quickly, because I want to write all of the sweet kissy things. Like that’s what I want to do. I just want to write, like, make out scenes all day long and, I did an Instagram live with a reader of mine this week and she was like, will you just write a book with all of these like kissing scenes that you want to write and just put them? And I was like, that is an anthology waiting to happen.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:11] A Valentine’s day anthology.

Kati Gardner: [00:20:14] Yeah. It’s just right there. All the first kisses, right there. So I, I’m notorious for that. So I have to go back and watch my pacing. And so whenever I was a baby writer and I say that, cause I was like, 14, 15. I’m writing my general hospital fanfiction.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:33] I loved that.

Kati Gardner: [00:20:34] Oh, I loved it so much. It was the best and I tell everybody, it’s one of the biggest advice I give for writers, is like, if you have a fandom that you were even moderately passionate about, go write fanfic. I was like, you’re going to get instant notes. So it’s instant gratification from the internet at large, and you’re playing in somebody else’s sandbox. So you’re not having to worry necessarily about character development. You’re just learning how to write a story.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:02] That’s so smart.

Kati Gardner: [00:21:03] The arc of it and how it goes. That’s what I tell all I, I used to, I was a teacher. And so whenever I would teach writing, that was one of the things I would do is I would have my kids, like we would read a book or they would read a book. And I was like, if you don’t want to take the one that we’ve just read in class for our novel study, take one that you’re really passionate about, but now you’re going to write some original fiction doing some fanfic.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:23] They must have loved that.

Kati Gardner: [00:21:25] I mean,

Rachael Herron: [00:21:26] It’s writing.

Kati Gardner: [00:21:27] A teacher. Yeah. Some of them were really into it and some of them not so much. And I was the theater teacher too. So like they were, you know, like, and they liked me for the most part, as long as I wasn’t teaching creative writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:43] But otherwise you were the artsy one, the one and they were the arts of kids. So what is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Kati Gardner: [00:21:51] Well, I rush, I’m terrible at pacing. I have to really slow down my pacing.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:56] Is that something you fixed in revision or while you’re going along?

Kati Gardner: [00:22:00] I try to fix it while I’m going along. Because otherwise you end up having to put so much more in the story, like if you brushed it and then you’ve like, it can throw off your whole timeline, because like I said, I, I tend to write. I want to write romances. Like that’s what I want to write, but it always ends up that my stories have a lot of extra layers to them. And so I have to be careful because if I rush that romance, it’s going to push those other layers and make a big ripple. And then it’s just a lot to fit.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:29] And we don’t want that happily ever after until the end.

Kati Gardner: [00:22:32] Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. It has to, you have to work for it. There has to be some payoff.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:39] I, I maintain that writing contemporary romance of any kind is the hardest writing to do. I write in five genres and it is so impossible because you’re keeping two very good people who deserve to be together apart for real organic con, conflicting reasons. And it’s so hard.

Kati Gardner: [00:22:56] It took me probably two years to come up with, I always knew I wanted to write Jase and Mari, or my lead characters in Finding Balance and I always knew that I wanted to write their story, but I had a really hard time. So I write, this particular series is told in dual point of views. I had a very hard time coming up with Jase’s storyline because that was making him, he didn’t go anywhere. He was just always a nice guy. He had nowhere to go.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:25] No character arc.

Kati Gardner: [00:23:27] Yeah. And I was like, Oh, he’s going to have to cut, he’s going to have to be mean. Like, he’s gonna, like to grow.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:32] And that’s, so hard to write.

Kati Gardner: [00:23:34] And I just want him to be mean. Like I love Jase, because he wasn’t, he, so, the other thing that I did is I wrote out of sequence. Brave Enough is actually a sequel to Finding Balance not the other way around.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:46] Oh how interesting.

Kati Gardner: [00:23:47] Yeah. Finding Balance takes place about six months beforehand. But because the two stories are completely separate outside of overlapping characters. So you don’t have to read either of them in order.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:03] But in the future when both are out, will people mostly read Finding Balance first and then Brave Enough?

Kati Gardner: [00:24:10] You don’t have to do it, like, I guess they could, like, ideally that would be the way they would do it.

Rachael Herron: [00:24:15] That’s so interesting

Kati Gardner: [00:24:16] I just, I didn’t mean to write it that way, it’s just the way it happened. But I always knew I was going to, so like, knowing that and knowing how much I liked who he ended up as, it was really hard to go back and be like, now I have to make you a jerk and you have to do jerky things. But also like one of the things that I tried, that I have tried to do really hard in Finding Balance is to, there’s this kind of, especially in pop culture and in media that cancer kids are saints, like that we are wise beyond their years and we’re here to teach all of these things. And I, one of the things I really, I wanted to kind of play against that idea. And so like, I had to kind of make him a jerk and he had to grow from it, but he’s, you know, he’s still a teenager and teenagers are jerks sometimes and we, you know, they make bad decisions. So, that, that was really hard for me. And it took, like I found an early draft of it this week and I was like, oh, he was so nice throughout this whole thing.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:19] That’s awesome. That’s awe, what a good answer. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Kati Gardner: [00:25:25] Writing the end. There is

Rachael Herron: [00:25:27] Oh yes

Kati Gardner: [00:25:28] nothing like that feeling like when you have, especially like, if it’s been, like if something that I have a hard time with third acts, third acts are really hard for me. So slogging that I can write the first two acts and what feels like two weeks.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:41] That’s so funny. So many people have a bigger problem with that middle portion.

Kati Gardner: [00:25:45] I have a really hard time with third acts, usually cause I’m tying all of those loose ends up and it could, I am coming off with writing a heist novel where there’s a lot of pieces that have to come together. I don’t know if this heist novel will ever be published. I’m just gonna put that out there.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:59] It’s so fun. I have a goal of writing a heist novel at some point. It just sounds so fun.

Kati Gardner: [00:26:04] It was super fun but there’s just a lot that you have to tie up at the end, and so writing that the end at the end of that, ooh that feels real good, and it just takes so long to get there. Like you have to really work to get to that, you know, and you know, some days it’s 500 words that you’re writing and some days, you know, for me on a really good day, I think the most I’ve ever written was like 4,000 in one day, that’s because I’m parenting.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:35] Yes! Yes.

Kati Gardner: [00:26:36] I have other friends that can churn out 10,000.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:37] I don’t understand those people.

Kati Gardner: [00:26:39] I don’t either. They can do it. I’m always like, how do you, how do you, like my brain turns kind of mushy.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:45] Mine does too. Where is your intellection?

Kati Gardner: [00:26:49] I forget where, I would have to look on my list.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:51] Okay

Kati Gardner: [00:26:52] Yeah, I forget where it’s put, so,

Rachael Herron: [00:26:53] All of us have to think real hard. We can’t just go throw down 10,000 words. The reservoir will be empty. Do you do the same thing that I do, which is I kind of like, I kind of wind up into typing the end? Like, here it comes, here come my fingers, T, H, E!

Kati Gardner: [00:27:10] it’s so fun! And I take pictures of it and I’m like, and I posted on all of my social media. I’m like, I don’t know whatever is going to happen to this, but look what I did. I did it again. Like it’s the fact that I, I did it again. Like it’s not, you know,

Rachael Herron: [00:27:23] It’s one of those things it doesn’t go away, like other things writing, you kind of get used to in publishing you kind of get used to. But writing the end, I don’t think you can ever get used to. Oh, that’s so good.

Kati Gardner: [00:27:32] That’s my favorite part.

Rachael Herron: [00:27:34] That’s so joyful. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?

Kati Gardner: [00:27:39] So I was thinking about this and I, I, I think that there, you never waste writing. So like, even if it’s something that, you know, you’re going to cut later, or you know, that maybe isn’t pushing because in YA, we are always working to push the story forward. There’s not, there’s just not a lot of room for, you know, moments that aren’t moving the story forward. Like one of the scenes I know I’m going to have to probably cut for my heist novel, its that make out scene in a pantry. It just doesn’t move the story forward. I will save it and put it somewhere else, but there is never any wasted writing, like it either helps you with your feeling, your character or finding the setting. There’s never any wasted writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:28:25] You have to write it to get there. Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:28:27] Yeah. And the other thing I was thinking about is it’s okay to not write like, currently since my CPs have that heist novel and are looking through it, I’ve been playing with that manuscript that I wrote in January a little bit, which I think is going to be another complete, completely new write. Like just same themes, but a completely different novel than what I wrote. And it’s okay to just let it sit there and kind of rumble in your head and to think a lot about it before you ever write anything down. I remember years ago I read Meg Cabot’s blog and she talked about how she knew almost the entire story before she ever wrote anything down. And I just think she would just think so often on it. And I was like, oh, that’s brilliant. And, one of the things that I tried to do early in the quarantine was break some of my phone addiction and some of my doom scrolling that I was doing. And so to do that, at night and, and in the mornings, whenever I’d be like getting up and I wasn’t writing, if I was just getting up instead of going right to my phone, which I try not to do anyway, I would think about what story I was working on. Like what, with the current thing that I’m thinking about a lot for this, this story that I’m going to rewrite is when was her first heartbreak and what was it? I mean, she’s, she’s, she’s 16. So, you know, there’s not a whole lot of years, but heartbreak can be more than a romantic break. Like I think right now it’s that when her, her new stepdad takes his daughter to the daddy daughter dance and doesn’t take her. Like that was the first time.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:13] Oh, that’s really good.

Kati Gardner: [00:30:14] That her heart broke.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:17] That’s really good.

Kati Gardner: [00:30:18] And so just like thinking, and it may never come into that story, but knowing that about her tells me a lot of things.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:27] So let me back up for a moment because I know that people will be interested in this. This is something that scares people a lot. I have done it once and I couldn’t even tell you how I did it. But taking a book that you’ve written and then completely rewriting it. What does that look like? How much are you referring back to the book or is it just all in your head? And now you are reframing new words on the page. How does that, what does that do?

Kati Gardner: [00:30:50] For me, so like for the heist novel, it had a completely different plot than what it ended up with. And I think the reason is,

Rachael Herron: [00:31:00] The heist is very plot heavy.

Kati Gardner: [00:31:01] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:02] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:31:02] It was, I think it was one of those things where I, I was trying to talk about how a team had formed without ever forming the team. So like I, I, and I guess it’s the same thing I did with Brave Enough and Finding Balance. I was writing a sequel before I wrote the first book.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:19] Oh, yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:31:21] And so I needed to go back and I mean, and I shelved it. I was like, you know what? This book is just going to be put away for right now. This is not the book I meant to tell right now and that’s fine. But I loved the idea, it’s a, I’m spilling all of the secrets. It’s a debutante heist novel, and I love the

Rachael Herron: [00:31:39] Keep my money.

Kati Gardner: [00:31:40] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:42] Take my money back

Kati Gardner: [00:31:43] I just love the idea of debutantes stealing things and they’re all like, there’s, there’s always a disability component. So like my lead character has a rotationplasty, which is a really interesting amputation and sometimes called a partial amputation. They, I’m going to try to explain that as best I can without visuals. Google at first, it’s rotationplasty. But what they do is they remove the part of the bone that is infected, which is the knee and then they turn the foot around and shorten it and connect it to the femur. So the foot now acts as your knee. So you have a foot it’s on backwards and it’s your knee. It’s amazing.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:26] Humans are amazing. And the doctors who thought of this are amazing. Like,

Kati Gardner: [00:32:29] And so, I’ve had, I’ve worked with, with, teenagers that have this and I was like, these girls need to see somebody that looked like them in a book.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:40] Yes

Kati Gardner: [00:32:43] And so I just really loved the idea of a teenage debutante with a disability, stealing and just walking out, like packing it in her prosthesis and walking out. And so I wanted that so much. I was, the book that I had been writing. I had like, I mean, I had a finished draft. But it, I was forming the team, and the team, or the team was already formed and there were, the stakes were, were high. It just never found the footing that I wanted it to have and so I kept thinking on it and I went back to several of my favorite craft books. Story Genius infuriates me, but it helps me a lot.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:30] I feel exactly the same way.

Kati Gardner: [00:33:32] I went back to Story Genius and I did a lot of that pre-writing stuff

Rachael Herron: [00:33:37] Yeah

Kati Gardner: [00:33:38] And that’s, and, and it was super helpful, because what I could never figure out. So my, the lead character in this novel, her name is Laila Beth, because she’s Southern. I could never figure out why Laila Beth started stealing to begin with. And, and it helped me figure that out, out a lot. And so the, you know, I sat down and rewrote the entire novel. And, and I love it so much more than what I had written before.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:07] And are you referring to anything, are you referring to notes from that other book? Do you ever look at that other book or is it just a way?

Kati Gardner: [00:34:11] No. It’s mostly, it’s most, it’s a way like, and it may be, can be a seq-

Rachael Herron: [00:34:15] That’s fascinating.

Kati Gardner: [00:34:17] It could maybe be a sequel.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:18] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:34:19] Someday because the team is together in that novel.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:21] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:34:24] but I think if I, I really like companion novels more than I liked direct sequels. So if I did tell another story in that world, it would probably be one of the other girls’ stories.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:40] That’s so cool.

Kati Gardner: [00:34:41] Yeah. So, I mean, it would all, it would involve a rewrite as well, but I could take more of that and rewrite it.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:48] And as you say, nothing is wasted.

Kati Gardner: [00:34:51] And I, and I went into it thinking, well, I may not be able to use that this time, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it later. So with the, the novel that I’m thinking on right now, like I, I, I wrote The First Kiss today because it came to me and I was like, I’m going to write this down while I’m sitting here for 15 minutes and not wasting time, but wasting time.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:12] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:35:14] This one is, I have a theme more than I have anything else. Like I know the theme of the novel, which is really unusual for me, and I think for, I don’t know, maybe other writers too. I don’t typically have a theme that I want to get across. But this one, I have a pretty hard theme that I want to get across and, I had written something and I just, I, I never really could, the stakes never felt high enough, it never felt serious enough. And then I realized that it, the stakes for this particular character are more internal. Because there doesn’t have to be a lot of external stakes in this particular one. And so, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull out Story Genius at some point, and I’m going to do a lot of that pre-writing cause I feel like it really helps me figure out what all of the stakes are.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:06] Yeah, I need to revisit that. That’s, it is, it is a really good book. What, what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Kati Gardner: [00:36:16] In a surprising way? I’m thinking of my life. Well, I mean, my kids do, but that’s not a really surprising way. Oh, I think, this is, this is for anybody that menstruates. My hormonal cycle affects my writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:32] Amen.

Kati Gardner: [00:36:34] And it’s, it was surprising when I put all of the pieces together and I was like, I am so much more creative when I’m ovulating than I am when I have, and I am, I am dead, like I am barren. I can’t do anything the week before I get my period. As soon as I start my period, I’m better. But like that week before I don’t sleep.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:58] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:36:59] I just, I have my attention span is really gone. And it’s, that was really surprising to me. Like I just never,

Rachael Herron: [00:37:08] I love how you said that. I think that a lot of women don’t think that through, and I don’t know if I’ve ever really thought that through in terms of creativity. I’ve thought of it, I thought it through in many other ways, but it really rings true with me too.

Kati Gardner: [00:37:20] Yeah. So, it’s, and, and then part of it is just general energy levels. Since I’m disabled, my spoons are different than, you know, somebody who’s abled. And, I just have to really respect when my body and my brain are like, you can’t do this today. Otherwise I’m just going to sit there and I’m gonna feel bad about myself for not being productive. And that’s something I, I think in the quarantine and in life that we’re starting to realize that the notion of constant productivity is unhealthy.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:54] It’s toxic and I am 100% like married to it.

Kati Gardner: [00:37:59] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:00] And I’m also trying to break that marriage. Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:38:01] And so I, and, a lot of my internalized ableism that I, that I carry and I try to work on is that it is okay to a.) ask for help when I need it, and to b.) not be constantly proving that I am not disabled. I am disabled and that’s fine. Just like somebody else has brown hair. It’s, you know, it’s part of who I am and it, it totally affects what I do on a day to day basis and I have to just, I have to be the one that says, this is where my, today my spoons are really low. Today I have, I can only keep those glass balls in the air. My plastic ones are all in a corner and they are going to sit there for the next week.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:51] I really appreciated when I, cause I’m, I’m battling, I don’t have a migraine, but I know it’s coming. And I emailed you earlier and said, there’s a, there’s a 20% chance I will have to cancel. And you were super, super cool about saying, I understand if you have to cancel, that’s fine.

Kati Gardner: [00:39:05] Yeah. I mean, I did another podcast earlier and, the, the creator of that one is, chronically ill and she’s like, I just can’t do it today. I was like, I get it. Low spoons are just, there’s just no use in spinning our wheels that way when we’re not going to create something that makes us feel good in the end.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:24] For those people who might be listening, who have never heard the spoon theory. Can you just briefly explain it? Cause I think it’s brilliant.

Kati Gardner: [00:39:30] I can try to. It’s used in the chronically ill setting mostly and the idea is that every person has a certain amount of spoons and,

Rachael Herron: [00:39:41] When they wake up.

Kati Gardner: [00:39:38] When they wake up in the morning. Yeah. And so those of us who are either chronically ill or disabled, just have less, fewer, fewer spoons.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:52] We’re allowed to say both now, according to Merriam-Webster last week. It’s, I’m,

Kati Gardner: [00:39:55] Yes. But not according to my husband who corrects it

Rachael Herron: [00:39:57] Or me. Right.

Kati Gardner: [00:39:57] constantly when I do it. And I look, I’m sorry, I’m a writer. I don’t know words,

Rachael Herron: [00:40:02] I know.

Kati Gardner: [00:40:03] I don’t, I don’t understand them. I don’t, I don’t know what to tell you. So those of us who have fewer, who, who just don’t have the same amount of spoons, we just don’t wake up with that many. And so our spoons get depleted. We, we use more of them and they need to be washed a lot quicker than people who do not have chronic illness or disability. And I hear it mostly in the chronic illness community. And I also have a, I have a heart condition. I have cardiomyopathy, as a result of the chemo I had 30 years ago. Yay, Chemo, the gift that keeps on giving. And so some, I have to just, that’s what the spoon theory is. I’ve also heard a good analogy of like a battery, like a cell phone battery, and I’m like, so I am the cell phone that just got the iOS update. And now my battery drains a lot quicker.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:56] Yeah. And the spoons actually refer in that same, I like the battery maybe a little bit better because the spoons are like, we use them as a spending term. Like you have to spend a spoon to take a shower and you might have to spend a spoon to make breakfast and wash the dishes.

Kati Gardner: [00:41:10] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:10] So the battery makes it more intuitive like that. Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:41:13] Ooh, sorry about that.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:14] No worries.

Kati Gardner: [00:41:15] I kicked my camera. So yeah, we just, we run out of, we run out of energy, we run out of spoons faster. And on the one hand, like the pandemic is terrible and I miss going out, I’m an extrovert. I miss seeing people. I miss being out in public. I miss writing in a Starbucks more than almost anything.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:34] Me too.

Kati Gardner: [00:41:35] I just, I just, and so, but on the other hand, like I can, I’ve been able to do so many like virtual events and like,

Rachael Herron: [00:41:45] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:41:46] I haven’t, like if I travel and it’s, traveling for me is complicated because I can’t carry a suitcase. And so I have to figure out, okay, do I take my laptop? Or do I take all of my makeup? Like what? What’s more, cause it’s a weight cause I have to carry it all on my back. And there’s just a lot, like I, yes, I can check my luggage, but I still have to get it off of the luggage.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:11] Yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:42:12] And you know, there’s just a lot of complications. And so like if I’m traveling, which I love to do, but it just, it takes so much more logistics for me than it does somebody else. So when I went to ALA in 2018, my husband came with me just cause I was like, I can’t figure out how I’m going to navigate New Orleans on my own at this massive convention center. And, thankfully we are, we’re in a place that he could do that. And so, you know, but I get that other writers are not, so I, I appreciate that now we have all of these virtual, like this is not new anymore. And there’s all this virtual stuff that people can do.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:55] And they understand how to do it now, too.

Kati Gardner: [00:42:57] Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:58] That’s great.

Kati Gardner: [00:42:58] Hopefully more disabled and chronically ill writers can do these things.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:02] I love that, so much. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms and I absolutely love that. So you’re launching this week. This is not on the list of questions, but do you like being with your publisher, flux? I was just looking at it,

Kati Gardner: [00:43:14] I do!

Rachael Herron: [00:43:15] and they, they look, they look awesome.

Kati Gardner: [00:43:17] They’ve been, my editor, Mari is first-rate, Mari Kasterling, and McKelle George, did Brave Enough and, also is a writer and has some amazing books out. So Speak Easy Speak Love by McKelle George is a fabulous book.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:31] What a great title.

Kati Gardner: [00:43:32] yeah, it’s, it’s a re- it’s a Shakespeare retelling, as you like it. It’s an act, I think, it’s great and it’s set in the twenties. It’s awesome. Right? Yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:44] Yeah, and this is Speak Easy.

Kati Gardner: [00:43:47] Yes. And so, but I’ve been really happy. They, they really supported me. They gave me great covers.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:54] They gave you great covers and they are a small, independent press. So they, you don’t have to be agented to submit to them.

Kati Gardner: [00:44:00] You do not. You do not.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:01] I noticed that.

Kati Gardner: [00:44:02] I am, I was agented. I’m currently not. I’m going to go back into the query trenches with this heist novel. But, I, my agent did sell those, both of those books for me. And I was, they were great to work with, but they are, they, I have several friends who have, who have subbed to them as an independent publisher. And, and they, they give you an advance and all of the things that a good publisher should do.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:29] Good. I’m so glad to hear that.

Kati Gardner: [00:44:31] Yeah, they’ve been great. No, I, the, Emily, who is the publicity person is wonderful and super on top of things. She set up a great little Instagram blog tour for me for this book.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:46] I love, I love publicists at independent publishers. They, they are so passionate.

Kati Gardner: [00:44:51] She’s a workhorse, too, man. Like she, I don’t, like, I just don’t know how she does it. Like, I just don’t, like she is constantly working. I feel like, I mean, I’m sure she has a work-life balance but-

Rachael Herron: [00:45:05] Or maybe she doesn’t. Some of us don’t.

Kati Gardner: [00:45:07] But I mean, she answers all of my questions really quickly and, I needed because I can’t travel, I have a pre-order campaign going through two bookstores, one, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and then Brave and Kind Book Shop out of Decatur, Georgia. But I can’t get to Georgia to sign the copies, like I would have if, if we did not have a pandemic. And so Emily was on top of it, she got me book plates so that I can sign those and send them to bunny at Brave and Kind, and then, with my little pre-order gifts, the people who have pre-ordered from there. Yeah. I mean, she, they were just, and I was like, I don’t have to print out the book plates. That’s awesome.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:49] I love that. I love that. Speaking of other people’s books and publishers, what is the best book that you’ve read recently?

Kati Gardner: [00:45:56] This isn’t, this is a, another, this is an older, it’s not an older title. I think it came out like maybe last year, two years ago. It was Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:05] I saw it. I never read it. It’s good?

Kati Gardner: [00:46:07] Oh, it’s so good, like it was one of those books, I just kind of smile through it. Like,

Rachael Herron: [00:46:13] Jumping on to my to be read pile.

Kati Gardner: [00:46:15] It’s so good. It was so, so, so sweet and like, it, it has, it features characters obviously, the title gives it away, that are chronically ill and the way that she talks about it without being preachy is just like, it’s just so good. And it’s obvious that Hannah gets it, the author, Hannah Moskowitz, I call her by her first name, like we’re BFFS. We are not.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:41] Yet.

Kati Gardner: [00:46:42] Yet, but just putting it out there. It’s like she just gets it. And she, she talks in it. The, the main character Ibby, has rheumatoid arthritis. And so things like walking are painful and she talks, she counts her steps, like, okay, it’s going to be this many steps to the staircase and then I’m going to go this many steps up the stairs. And she lives in New York, New York. So there’s all this walking that happens. And she talks and I’m like, that’s exactly how I think. Like, that’s it, and, it’s just, it was so good, the way that she just got that and, and the boy in the book is named Sasha and I love him. And he has a genetic disease that’s very different from what Ibby has. And so it’s, there’s a lot of this talk of, being disabled, but not as disabled and something I really resonated with because like, I use crutches, but I’m not a wheelchair user, so I’m not, you know, like when you’re younger, well, I’m not that disabled, but it’s, they’re all mobility aids or I’m in the LGBT community. I see it a lot with where it using a prosthesis versus not and then like using a prosthesis does not make you able. You’re still disabled. It’s, it’s a choice and no choice is better or worse and so I just loved the way that she talked about those things with it was so good.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:11] It’s so, it’s so awesome to look at your face. If anybody’s watching on YouTube, most people listen to this show, but some people will watch on YouTube and you’re just like lit up like a star. When you said that, that’s amazing. Speaking of lighting up like a star and talking about like books, will you please tell us about Finding Balance and where we can find it and you out there, but give us a little. It’s so gorgeous.

Kati Gardner: [00:48:30] You can find Finding Balance, my beautiful, beautiful cover. You can find Finding Balance anywhere at Barnes and Noble, your local independent bookshop, bookshop.org, Indie Bound, or if you want to order from my two favorite bookshops, it’s Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, or Brave and Kind Bookshop out of Atlanta, Georgia, they both ship. So, feel free or, Page 158 out of one out of Wake Forest, North Carolina. We’re really lucky here that we have a lot of great independent bookstores.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:01] Yeah, that sounds amazing.

Kati Gardner: [00:49:03] We have Flyleaf at Chapel Hill, we have regulator at Durham, we have all of these great, so there’s some plugs from some great independent bookstores.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:10] I love that.

Kati Gardner: [00:49:11] But Finding Balance, I, I don’t know that I can ever sum the, sum it up succinctly, which is why I had to write a whole novel for it. It’s, it’s about two teenagers, Jase Ellison and Mari Manos and Jase and Mari met at cancer camp. They met at a camp called Camp Chemo which is fictionalized, but it’s the fictionalized version of Camp Sunshine out of Jordan, Atlanta, Georgia, which I spent many, many, many years as a camper and a counselor at, and still go, as a volunteer. But, so Jase and Mari met at Camp Chemo and, they have what I call a flirtation-ship. Like they flirt with each other all the time, but they only really ever see each other at camp and so it comes as quite a shock when Mari walks or crutches into Jase’s AP chemistry class at his very elite, private school.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:10] Love it.

Kati Gardner: [00:50:11] In Atlanta. And he looks at her and says, I don’t know you. And she’s like, yeah. I told you. He’s not nice in the beginning. Gotta have a growth.

Rachael Herron: [00:50:25] Perfect. Perfect, yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:50:27] Yeah. It cuts, comes to find out that, Jase’s school knows that he had leukemia as a preschooler. And he is his biggest fear is that coming out is somebody finding out that he had leukemia and Mari lives life as a one, like a girl she walks around on crutches and, doesn’t know of, she’s never had the luxury of not telling people. You know, the Aaron, I think it’s Aaron Bowman who talks about minding your own store, your own life for your stories and I, I mind my life for Finding Balance. And that I never, I always felt like I had to explain to people why I had one leg and I was never going to lie to them and be like, oh, it was a car accident whenever I had cancer, like, it just didn’t make sense to me. And then I found out that my best friend, who we had been on treatment together, had never told anybody that she had had leukemia. And I was like, wait, that’s an option?

Rachael Herron: [00:51:32] It would never have if you lost your mind.

Kati Gardner: [00:51:34] Wait, you get to do that? And so that’s what the book is about. It’s about these two characters and Jase dealing with, you know, Mari is all of a sudden at his school and in his, and you know, in the circle with all of these people that he knows and, and there’s still an attraction there and how are they going to deal with that?

Rachael Herron: [00:51:55] That’s awesome. I love that word flirtation ship too. That’s good.

Kati Gardner: [00:51:58] Flirtation ship. It’s, it’s my favorite word. Like if I read from the book I read where that’s in there because it’s my favorite one. I felt so smart that day.

Rachael Herron: [00:52:10] That’s awesome.

Kati Gardner: [00:52:12] And so that’s, that’s what the book is about. Like, and it’s also, I mean, it’s got, Mari has a really awesome family that’s super supportive. She has three older brothers and, they are all fun in their own way. She’s got, you know, two that are extreme extroverts and then there’s one that’s an introvert that happens to be dating her speech and debate teacher. No, Nope. That’s wrong. He is not the introverted one is not debating, dating. He, she, he, he is dating who ends up being Mari’s AP chem tutor. I cried throughout chemistry. Like I cried through that class. So Mari struggles with AP chemistry and homage to me, I just don’t understand. It’s not my life, I promise. Cause I never had a Jase Ellison in my life.

Rachael Herron: [00:53:03] But we do mind, our lives for these kinds of things, yeah.

Kati Gardner: [00:53:05] But, but we do. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:53:07] Oh, that’s beautiful. Thank you so, so, so much, Kati, it has been such a joy to talk to you. I’m so glad that my head cooperated because I was like, no I want to talk to her today.

Kati Gardner: [00:53:18] It was super fun. Thanks so much for having me.

Rachael Herron: [00:53:21] You’re so welcome. And I, we will talk soon.

Kati Gardner: [00:53:24] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:53:25] Thank you.

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

Ep. 204: Vicki Pettersson on How Yoga Helps Her Write Lots of Books

December 20, 2020

Vicki Pettersson is a NYT & USA Today bestseller of ten traditionally published novels – 9 fantasies and 1 really mean cat-and-mouse thriller – and she’s a Las Vegas native who worked as a showgirl for a decade in order to pursue her writing goals during the day. She now hosts a new channel on YouTube for aspiring authors, providing tools, tips, and strategies for a successful career while staying sane.

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 204 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I could not be more thrilled that you are here today, we are talking to the amazing Vicky Pettersson on the show. She is a personal friend of mine. We have been in each other’s orbit or you know, 10 years but we’ve only really gotten to know each other this last year. And she is a delight. You’re going to love listening to her and you’ve got to go to her Writer’s YouTube. I routinely get inspiration from her over there. So you can look forward to that.

[00:00:53] What is going on around here? Well, let’s see, I’ve gotten a copy edits on Hush Little Baby back. So I have two weeks to do that. I always think it’s going to take like three hours and it never does copy editors are always so smart and they say, why did this happen this way? Oh my gosh. She gave me a note that was like, okay so in chapter 9, she’s 39 weeks pregnant. And then a day later, she’s 40, but what happened about the 38th week? Because in the 37th week on page, blah, blah, blah. She said she was still six days away from this. They do these things, they ask these really good questions and then you have to go back and figure things out and make them work. So copy edits always take longer than I think they will. And I’m trying to be realistic about that. These are not due until Monday. It’s Thursday as I record this, I better get on it. Actually I just realized that. Yep. In my mind, I had been pushing it away as simple again, got to stop doing that will work on it after I record this and let’s see. Sorry about there being no show last week I was trapped in the grips of a migraine. That was not good. It was, it was a good, a 5-day rollercoaster of trying to get out of it and seriously not fun. So in those moments, I give myself a big old hug and a pass. I hate letting you all down. There are some of you, because you’ve told me you look forward to Fridays and its part of your schedule to listen. And I am gob smacked and honored that you would choose to do that. It makes me feel so good and it makes me feel so bad when I’m not there. When I don’t show up. I was raised to be, you know, if you’re not early, you’re late. You need to show up when you say you’re going to show up. So sometimes I really, it makes the migraine worse. I’m lying in bed, fighting, fighting this guilt, and it’s very, it’s liberating to just let it go and say. You guys know me, hopefully you adore me the way I adore you and you can understand when I’m not around. So thank you for that.

[00:03:00] Let’s see. What else? In New Zealand update, couple of things have happened. First is the best news that our dog Clementine, who basically was dying the last time I talked to you, she had been given this terrible diagnosis that said that she was going to die any minute. We literally put her in hospice and we have this it’s called a care kit that if she starts to hemorrhage to death, which is the Hemangiosarcoma that they shot, they thought she had inside, is to put her and make her comfortable until the vet can come and put her down at home. Love having that on hand, love that we are able to put her in this kind of hospice care she’s, she’s now on really great pain medication. She’s a pit bull mix. She’s the sweetest dog I’ve ever met in my life. But she’s a pit bull mix so she doesn’t show pain well, and it wasn’t until we got her completely out of pain with his drug cocktail, that hospice gave us that we realized, oh my God, you know, poor girl, like, look at how much better she feels. Also, the hemangiosarcoma that she, they thought she had in her spleen was only a surface hemangiosarcoma- it’s very hard to say, and her spleen is fine and her pancreas are doing better and she’s still in kidney disease, but whatever, she could have some more time with us. Here’s the thing New Zealand doesn’t take bully breeds at all. You cannot get them in. You can’t get them through quarantine and Clementine is the dog of our heart. We can’t, we can’t leave her behind. I, we’re gonna have to face thinking about how to leave behind our older boy cats. Our boy cats are our two brother cats can’t make the journey. They’re too old and they’re too happy with each other and I wouldn’t want to do that to them. So we’re going to have to find a new home for them and have to find a new home for that. A little blonde fur pile that’s behind me on the video, on the floor, that’s Dozy, she’s literally the cutest dog anyone’s ever seen. And I love her. But people who have had pets understand this, you have pets that you love with all your heart, and then you have the pet, every once in a while you get the pet that is a, an animal of your soul. Digit, my cat was like that. Harriet, Lola’s dog was like that. Clementine is that for both of us. So with this stay of execution, the literal stay of execution, we don’t know how long we’ve got here now. Lala asked the vet yesterday, so what’s the prognosis for this particular dog at this particular time? If we keep her out of pain and keep feeding her the good stuff and they said cheerfully, Oh, you know, you might get another couple of good years out of her and Lala and I are both thrilled and at the same time, allowing us to go to New Zealand was losing her and that was kind of almost part of the recovery of the heartbreak of knowing we would lose Clementine at any second within the next, you know, day or two or next week we were thinking about New Zealand and that was comforting. So like it’s super, super awesome. And it might be slowing down our, retreat, which is just fine. It’s just fine.

[00:06:15] Very excited, still to think about New Zealand and think about, the health care that we will receive there. We’re moving early enough in our lives that if we stay, which is our plan, we will be, we will have paid in enough to have retirement, actual retirement. We are, both Lala and I are grasshoppers. You know, we’ve, we’ve always lived rather than saved. So we do have some retirement savings, but it’s very, very low compared to most 48 year olds in this country. So, knowing that my taxes in New Zealand can go to taking care of us in our dotage is really exciting. I did apply for my New Zealand passport, which I had never gotten around to doing just hadn’t been something I wanted to spend $150 on knowing I have citizenship, but not having the passport wasn’t a big deal. So I went to their website, I applied for my passport and New Zealand apologized to me on the website and said, we’re so sorry. It might take up to 16 days to get this to you. Is that gonna be okay? Meanwhile, I had mailed Lala’s renewal of her US passport because it had expired. And they’re saying, we hope we get this back to you in six months, but no guarantees, New Zealand not only took those two weeks that they had asked for those 16 days, they actually got it to me in 10 days, a brand new passport, I never had a passport. Citizen who’s never had a passport. It shows up in my hand in California, hand delivered from DHL, my new passport. And it’s beautiful. It’s such a gorgeous passport. It’s, it’s this, this got the silver fern on it. It’s got all of these, amazing digital things happening. There’s a little clear spot, but if you look through the clear spot, you can be almost see my face, like a shadow of my face as well as the three different other places that are, you know, my, my face board into this plastic page that is like a computer basically in this passport. Right now, it is the most powerful passport in the world. Right now, I can get into 129 countries without a visa, which is the strongest there is right now in COVID days. Not that I would ever foist my American body from this germ pool that we are continuing to live in. I would not go to another country. And if we go to New Zealand, we do have to do the two-week mandatory quarantine, of course, inside their hotel where they bring you every meal and you pay, you pay through the nose for it and good for them. That’s how they keep COVID out of their country. Anyway, I feel like I’m rambling right now, but there has been a lot of, back and forth motion. And a lot of, a lot of good feelings just we’re so happy that Clementine feels better and we might get some more time with her. And we’re also really happy to be moving forward with this plan, but at a slower pace, we’re not trying to get out by April, which was what our original timeframe was. So, I’ll keep you posted on that. It is very exciting. I’m looking forward to updating you and taking you with us to New Zealand will my old accent come back that I had until I was seven, probably it’s super annoying. I really hate it. Cause I can hear it in my own voice as soon as I get there or as soon as I talk to a Kiwi, it comes back. It used to come back a lot when I was drinking and a lot, when I was really, really tired after being up for like 48 hours at work, then it would come back but since I don’t do though, either of those things anymore, Lala, my wife doesn’t usually hear my New Zealand accent and she mocks me when it comes out but it’s still there and it wants to come out.

[00:09:56] So, okay. I also would like to thank a bumper crop of Patreon, pledges, which make me feel wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to the people who support on Patreon. You are the reason I get to write those essays that I love writing; this last essay was about my love affair with my desk and organization. And then I, from there moved out into the connection that we need in this world. And right now you and I are connecting. And I think that is pretty special and terrific, so thank you for being here. So thank you also to new patrons at the, you get a text from me that you can respond back to level, which is the $3 a month level. Thank you to Deir Anne Charlize. I’m probably saying your last name wrong, but it is beautiful and I appreciate you for many reasons and you know why. Natalie Tyndall, thank you. Tracy Bishop, thank you, thank you so much y’all and at the $5 a month level where I become your mini coach and I do those mini episodes for you, after I collect some questions. I have new patrons, Sonya. Sonya. I’ve never known how to say your last name; Wrights is how I’m going to attempt it. So you, you are darling, thank you. And also Shakoura Amatoula, beautiful name. Thank you, Shakoura. Doug Schneider. Hey Doug! It’s nice to see you and Lisa and Jill Ross Kneidler. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. It means the world that you show your support of this show and of those essays in such a hugely important and lovely way. I got to tell you, I say this every once in a while that, even the $1 pledges are so welcome and appreciated, like from the bottom of my heart, it doesn’t matter what level you pledge at, it makes a really true difference in my life. It is something that allows in my budget for us to save for pet emergencies, which is how we were able to afford pet hospice, which- oh my God, I wish everyone could use. I wish that our vets that we go to and spend so much money on, have the, would have the time to talk you through five different medicines that will have very few side effects, but makes an animal feel so much better. Would that be wonderful?

[00:12:22] So, anyway, thank you for the patronage. Really appreciate it. You can always go check that out at Rachel- no, that’s wrong at patreon.com/Rachael There’s that. Let us jump into this amazing and inspiring interview with my friend Vicki. You will want to leave our conversation and go write. I can predict it. And I think that you should find me somewhere online and tell me how you are doing writing wise. I always love to hear it. I wish you happy writing my friends and we’ll talk soon.

[00:12:51] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:12] Well, I could not be more pleased at, I’m already giggling to introduce my friend Vicki Pettersson. Hello, Vicki!

Vicki Pettersson: [00:13:19] Hello!

Rachael Herron: [00:13:20] Welcome to the show! We were just chatting backstage as it were, about how thrilled we are to be having this discussion. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction. Vicki Pettersson is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller of 10, traditionally published novels – 9 fantasies, and 1 really mean cat-and-mouse thriller. And she’s a Las Vegas native who worked as a showgirl for a decade in order to pursue her writing goals throughout the day. I love that. She now hosts an awesome new channel on YouTube for aspiring authors, providing tools, tips, and strategies for a successful career while staying sane. Vicki, I have to tell you, I love your YouTube channel and when I watch it, I’m like she really, my friend she’s so cool and fun and pretty.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:14:02] I feel like that every single time we talk, every single time I run into you, I’m like, I know her! I mean quarantine, I’m not saying it to anyone but myself. I’m like, I know, I know her. I’m so happy to finally know you because we have friends in common, but now we finally connected and I would like to keep you.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:22] There. That is what I do. I like to collect and to be collected.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:14:27] Awesome

Rachael Herron: [00:14:28] So works for me, yeah, we are in, and I will say this because it’s not a secret and it’s something other writers I think should do. We’re in a mastermind together and that’s kind of how we’ve gotten to know each other is we have this author’s mastermind. Have you ever been in a mastermind before?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:14:43] I have not and I was, I am not a joiner by nature. Obviously. You know, not unsurprising for a writer. And so initially I was like, no, no, no I can’t do that I don’t, it’s a commitment, and you know, and I’m bad with anything that has to be planned. If that’s bringing something on me, then I’m like, yeah, let’s go do that. I’m super excited about it. But I have to plan out for more than a week and like that’s an obligation. So I was, worried and then I was like, you know what? I need to shake things up. I’ve been alone for, you know, two decades, really doing this gig alone. And I think it would be great to have some sort of camaraderie and writing besties and, and you know, the people in the group are all very, you know, independent and strong and experienced, and I had literally nothing to worry about and it’s been so additive, additive to my life just, not just because I love everybody in there, but also because, the experiences, I can run things by all of you and, I don’t have to give so much context, you know, you understand where I’m coming from and you can just nail it from the beginning, so

Rachael Herron: [00:15:58] Especially since I think all of us came in around the same time. I think you were maybe a couple a year or two before me but we were all coming in around 2008, 2010 into publishing. Right? When did you, when did you first come out?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:16:10] Yeah, so the first one was out in ‘07

Rachael Herron: [00:16:12] Okay. Yeah. So we all kind of have been through this huge sea change.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:16:18] In each scene, literally right after or during your, cause you came in ’09, ’10, right?

Rachael Herron: [00:16:24] Yeah. That’s when everything was changing.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:16:27] Under your feet must tell it quick sand. I know it’s not like quick sand under my feet so

Rachael Herron: [00:16:32] borders closed the week that my second book came out. The week

Vicki Pettersson: [00:16:38] I had a book in my first series come out the week that the stock market crashed. So the bookstores literally sent it back three days later, gone. Remaindered, stripped everything and that some of that series I was like, yes. That sucked.

Rachael Herron: [00:16:59] And that’s one of those things you cannot predict and the same thing for COVID people coming out during COVID like, what if it was your very first book coming out right now? I have a friend whose very first book came out on 9/11 in 2002, like literally sold nothing. Nothing.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:17:15] No. Then the bean counters counted against her sales and

Rachael Herron: [00:17:22] Absolutely. Yeah. You didn’t, you didn’t earn out. So therefore you can’t sell another book.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:17:25] Yeah. So that’s a, that’s what, that’s what you can’t control about this business, I think is the harvest part of this business. Yeah. It makes the writing seeing infinitely easier.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:36] Yes. I was just going to say that because it is something that it’s the only thing I can control; is the writing. So speaking of writing, first of all, but let’s say it at the top end at the bottom of this episode, where can we find you on YouTube, your channel?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:17:47] So it’s Vicki Pettersson Author, you can just Google it because YouTube is a Google search engine and it’ll pop right up. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:57] Perfect. So let’s talk about your writing process because I love the way that you talk about writing. You talk about writing the way I want to always talk about writing, which is really enthusiastically, really encouragingly and to say that, yes, you can do this and it’s hard for everybody. Which is, which is better to me than ever, you know, the people who say, Oh, everybody can do this. No, it’s hard. And it hurts and we have to talk about it. So,

Vicki Pettersson: [00:18:24] Right. Well, I think everybody can do it if they have discipline. If they’re willing to put in the time, if they’re willing, if they want it more than anything else in the world, like for a time there and I don’t think this is forever, but in the beginning you really need to make it a priority and make it like learning the craft of it your obsession. Right? And then eventually it can join all your other obsessions and it becomes one more, one more of those things that you have, you know, like in your toolbox. Everyone was talking about a writer’s tool box and how you pull those things out one by one. But the entire craft can be, become that, you’re always learning and growing, and you’ve never arrived because you’ve never written this particular book before, but you know, there are some things that you don’t have to keep learning again and again, and again. I know how to structure a sentence. I know that show don’t tell for me comes later in drafts. I suck at that. I, I, I tell so much that my editors are like, this sucks. I’m like, shit, I have to go back in

Rachael Herron: [00:19:26] Get it again

Vicki Pettersson: [00:19:27] The entire book, but that’s just a, that’s called a draft. So I’ve got buttercup of new work.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:33] I really love letting editors do their job too. Well, me and a couple of you- Sophie, who you know, we always say, well, they’re getting paid to do this job let them do their work rather than trying to, to send them a perfect draft, nah, just send it to them

Vicki Pettersson: [00:19:50] Yeah you level best at that time, giving you your constraints, but there was a deadline or you’re dumb? I don’t know that month. I don’t know. And then, and then let it go and keep going, you know

Rachael Herron: [00:20:02] Yeah. And I can almost hear listeners going, but I don’t have an editor. You will have an editor, no matter what, if you are going to publish a book, even if you self-publish, you will have an editor to help you with this. And I think that a lot of the people that I work with forget that. They’re like I have to make it as perfect as I can. And that’s all. No, you can have an editor to help you.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:20:20] Yeah, that’s right. Like I said, you do your level best that they want to help you. That’s what they’re there for. And then also, like they’re not there to change your book. I one, one thing that, or one question that the winning novelists often have, are they going to make me change my book? And they’re like, no, that’s your book. Nobody’s going to make you do anything, but they enhance what’s there or they point out you know, what you think you put on the page that remains in your head. And so I take 98%

Rachael Herron: [00:20:51] I do too, maybe 99.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:20:53] Probably 99.5. Let’s just keep raising the bar here because like I just do it. They’re like this sex change with a client, no ego, no ego. Like you can’t have an ego when it comes to that stuff, because that’s why you have that second pair of eyes. And then I just want to say, as far as the way I talk about writing on the channel, I, that is jump cut, cutted. That is edited to the, to the teeth. Like I am

Rachael Herron: [00:21:21] I am so good at editing it though. It’s like, so professional

Vicki Pettersson: [00:21:23] It’s fun. storytelling. It’s one of those things that I had to learn. I just learned Imovie on my mac and it took me a couple of weeks, maybe a month, you know, not even that long, a couple of weeks, I just had to take the time for, to watch a tutorial and somebody showed me how to do it. And then I just did it. And now I just, I take out even breath. So if I take a breath, I go as fast as I possibly can. And I try to get as much material on that given subject in a short amount of time, because I don’t want to waste anybody’s time.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:55] What’s really funny is that I watch everything on YouTube at about 1.5 or 1.75. And I can’t, I can’t for you.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:03] Yes that’s my goal.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:04] That would be too fast.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:06] Okay, two things. Number one, that’s why I do it. And then number two, when you’re trying to build a YouTube channel, like I’m trying now, because it’s relatively new. If somebody does that, it doesn’t count towards your watch time.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:20] Wait. What?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:21] Yeah, it counts like half the watch time so.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:22] You’re kidding!

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:24] No, I just, I, I mean, I heard that somewhere, it may or may not

Rachael Herron: [00:22:27] That’s so rude. I feel bad now because like, my brain gets bored if people are slow, you’re not slow. That’s, you will never, ever, I don’t think you’ve ever been boring in your whole life, so I will just say that. Speaking of, speaking of not boring, what is your writing process like? Where and when and how much and how do you get into it? All of that.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:47] I just cut out the boring parts.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:51] That is literally the goal, right?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:22:53] Literally the goal. No. Well, okay. So I can give you my idea, but with the caveat that it always changes, depending on now, okay I’ve been doing this for two decades, I’ve done it through a birth, a divorce, a remarriage living in two cities, mostly working on airplanes. So all of that said, you know, it changes, there are a lot of variables there, however, ideally I’m up early. I love-

Rachael Herron: [00:23:22] What is early for you?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:23:23] Oh gosh, I wish I could get up earlier, but about 5:30.

Rachael Herron: [00:23:28] That’s nice and early. Yeah.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:23:30] My grandmother used to get up at 3 in the morning and I was like, grandma that’s the middle of the night. She’s like, well, I have so much to do. I was like what do you have to do? So-

Rachael Herron: [00:23:40] That’s perfect.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:23:41] Yeah. So I think I’m turning into her. I keep pushing it back. But when I first started and I was writing my second novel, I had a newborn, I was getting up at 4:00 AM, waking myself and hating it, but just thinking, how bad do you want it? How bad do you want it? And that’s what I was referring to before. Like in the beginning you have to be a little obsessive and do that. I don’t have to do that anymore because I don’t have a newborn. If I did, then, you know, yeah. So what you have to realize is what’s going on with you now is not, it’s not always going to be that way at a good or bad, you know, so you do the very best you can with what you have at that time. So right now, I get to be in one place, the pandemic has limited me to one city, so I’m no longer going back and forth between two different cities every other week. And so I get at the 5:30, 5:30 and I grab my coffee and I go into this room, it’s the new room for me, it’s a new space. That’s why it’s so boring, but I promise you, I’m going to turn it into my YouTube studio and it’s going to be really pretty. So yeah, just a room where I can shut the door. I really have come to find that I really love being able to shut that door and it just, my, my mind takes a mental exercise to releases it, and then I can just take those first hours of the day to usually I can read, I’ll read, a little bit, try to stay away from the news cause I don’t want that in my mind. First thing, read some fiction, but generally I will write, not write journal. So I have this other working writer’s journal.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:30] Oh, will you please share this incredible idea? And people can also go look at your website for this, but did I tell you that I’ve started doing this since you told me about it?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:25:38] No

Rachael Herron: [00:25:39] I always kind of kept my morning pages on the side and I did a lot of journaling about writing inside it, but you do it a little bit differently and I would love for you to tell us this.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:25:50] Yeah. So, well, first the reason I do it differently is because I’ve done morning pages as well, Julia Cameron’s the right way. And it’s a classic and it’s wonderful. And it works for so many people and it works for me, but I always had that sense of, well, I can’t read my handwriting and it’s great that I got it out and you know, it’s very meditative for the day, but I can’t use any of that now, now, and feel like, you know, there’s, you know, 1500 words, sending a 1500 words and maybe there was something in there that I could use, you know, because it’s in here and it’s all connected. So I actually, I don’t know if I, I think I neglected to say this. I had originally heard it somewhere from Sue Grafton. The late Sue Grafton

Rachael Herron: [00:26:34] I think you said that I think that was on the video. Yeah.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:26:36] Okay, great and, and so I’ve augmented it a little bit, but really all you do is you write down the date, so you end the day. So I’ll write down the date and the day. And to ground, to ground yourself, right? It sounds silly, but it grounds me. And then I write only no more than two sentences of where I am in that day. So that I know, you know, my child is sick, you know or I was up in the middle of the night with a toddler or, you know, I didn’t sleep well last night or I got a great night’s sleep. And so that serves as a record of- so later on, you can go back and see what the writing did or did not go well that day. It’s not an excuse, but it’s really, it’s like, all right, give yourself a little bit of a break. You’re more than just a writer. You’re this fully formed human being. And so all of it, all of it counts. Right? So it kind of records your mental state at the beginning. And then I, I give myself not a story prompt because again, I just feel like prompts are not useless, but I really like everything to be applied. If you only have so much time and more importantly, so much mental energy you really want that to be going into the work. Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:27:53] Yes

Vicki Pettersson: [00:27:54] So I’ll give myself of where I left off in the story yesterday, or what I’m thinking about today or the problem that I’m having with this story right now, or if I’m really, really been on it and, and left myself notes from the day before for a scene, you know, like how to get in and out of it. And maybe two or three, you know, how it turns turning points in that, in that particular scene, then I can start talking about that. And I swear to you, like if I do that and I just melt into it before the morning- before yeah, the morning and the day and the news and you know, all of the responsibilities that I have get to me, I’ve written, you know, 700 to a thousand words within 45 minutes, before I even opened that door again, before my coffee has gone cold, right. It’s amazing. And so then that’s a wonderful win. And then I will get up and go, you know, take my child to school, if that’s what needs to be done or you know, just do the morning shuffled, I call it, brush my teeth and then, and then come back for three or four hours’ tops. And that’s it. And so I like to leave the afternoon so I can run errands, speak with family, go watch my kidlet play tennis and you know, real life. I don’t work all day. I don’t even try to work all day anymore. I don’t think it’s healthy for me. And, and I don’t care like writing is now, writing is now a part of my life, it’s not my entire life.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:27] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. And when you’re writing about writing, you, do use Scrivener? I can’t remember what you said.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:29:35] You, do you use Scrivener?…

Rachael Herron: [00:29:36] Is it just like a, it’s like a journal inside that inside that project? Is that right?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:29:41] So I’ll have like, swerve, elite swerve, working journal. So, yeah, so it’s a record of that time in my life. So you can go back and what’s also great is you can go back and see, you know, if you have any uncertainty that where you are in your project, you can go back and look at your previous uncertainty and go, Oh, I’ve been here before.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:04] Well and that’s why I was gonna have a question. Do you have the same concerns coming up a lot? I’m sure that that would happen for me. And also, I think you said in your video that sometimes you will just be able to lift writing out of the journal and put it into the working document. Right?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:30:19] Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I’m talking about, that 700 to a thousand words of you know, all of the sudden most of the time I’ll be writing down dialogue, you know, and I’ll go, and it’ll be dialogue and then my work quote, unquote easy work for the day, is just like tagging that shit.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:37] Oh, that’s beautiful.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:30:39] So pretty. It makes me so happy, it gives me chills.

Rachael Herron: [00:30:43] The time, the times that I’ve done it, cause you know, I’ve just been finishing up this book since I’ve heard this idea, but at the same thing has happened like I’ll be writing about the work, about the work, and suddenly somebody will say something and I’ll type out what they say. And then somebody else starts talking and the scene starts happening even though I was just, I call it skeletoning sometimes when I’m writing about what’s gonna happen in a scene and it just takes off. It’s so fun.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:04] It’s so fun.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:05] And it’s like you’re tricking yourself cause I didn’t tell myself I was going to work on the document like I’m just journaling.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:09] It’s a total trick. It’s a total trick because it’s not your documents, it’s not open.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:14] Right, right

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:15] Your book isn’t open

Rachael Herron: [00:31:16] You’re not working on that.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:17] You’re not working, you’re just, you just doodling.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:18] You’re having a cup of coffee and doodling

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:20] You’re having a cup of coffee in the freshest part of your day when your mind is at its, you know, freshest and also pretty close to that, you know, sleeping state. Right?

Rachael Herron: [00:31:32] Which is great place to approach the page from I’ve always believed

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:35] Yeah capture that map.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:37] Yeah. So what is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:40] Okay. This is so vulnerable.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:45] Oh, good.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:46] Yeah, no actually, actually, you’re going to help me with this because you sent out via your patreon today a, an essay on failure.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:58] Oh, yes.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:31:59] Yeah. So, learning that failing doesn’t mean you’re a failure.

Rachael Herron: [00:32:05] Yeah.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:32:06] Because, okay. So for example, like with that first series in that book of being sent back, I mean, my first series then Tanked, right? I mean, I had another book left in it, but after that, you know, the cells are what they are, so failure. Right. My second, my second series was a trilogy. It was only meant to be a trilogy, but I had bigger expectations for it. Failure. My Swerve, last thing I’ve ever written, a lot of people don’t know that. Failure. You know, so, but failing doesn’t mean you’re a failure. I really had to separate that and this is the part of like, why I talk on YouTube about being healthy as well, because you are not just a writing machine, you know, you’re a person and you need to have all of these aspects in order to you in order to write about anything at all. So, so that has been really hard. I remember I quit white writing for a few years in 2015 after my father passed. And it was really a travesty because I remember thinking I can’t quit because I’ll be a quitter, but I couldn’t mourn without quitting. So here I am in one of the most eventful, one of the biggest events of my entire life and I felt like I couldn’t mourn it. Such tragic bullshit,

Rachael Herron: [00:33:34] Yeah

Vicki Pettersson: [00:33:35] Tragic bullshit. And so I was like, I never, ever, ever going to feel that way about writing again, either it’s additive or it’s not, it’s, you know, it’s not going to be a part of my life. I don’t identify that closely with it anymore, and I enjoy it so much more now.

Rachael Herron: [00:33:51] I love- and I’ve heard you say that before that, that it’s generative and additive and it needs to be that way. I love that I lose track of that a lot. I let things start to take away from me. And that’s one thing I’ve learned by, from going full time is learning to identify the dread when I feel it. And if I’ve got the dread, what does that mean? Where do, what do I need to remove? What do I need to excise to get rid of that dread? and it seems like you found it out really the hard way.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:34:19] For sure. Yeah, it was complete and total burn out. And I don’t want, I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t want other writers or other people to have to burn out completely in order to realize that that’s not necessary, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:34:33] And hope that people learn from that. I keep seeing people learning and running out, you know.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:34:37] Yeah and also just realizing that it’s sometimes, sometimes in your life, you’re gonna be writing more and sometimes you’re maybe writing less. It’s like the ocean, you know, and breathing. The ocean doesn’t roll in and just keep rolling, I mean the earth would be flooded. Right? It goes in, it goes out, it comes again, it comes out. Sometimes you have to stop. Reset, pause, and then you can resume. But and again, and again, so depending on like those events, like you got your deaths and divorces and marriages and children, and so make space. For those things as well, because again, that’s going to inform your writing and you’re going to create new things depending on what you’re experiencing. So experience it to the full. I honestly, I mean, as horrible as it was, I quit totally when my dad passed. And I remember the day that he passed, I sat in the backyard with my wine at like 10:00 AM and I felt it. I said to myself, I’m going right through the middle on this, right.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:35] Oh, wow.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:35:36] Yeah, I’m gonna feel every single thing, because I, I’m not going to let this you know, back up inside of me and I feel like everything needs to flow. Like

Rachael Herron: [00:35:49] it’s so good and healthy and it’s, it’s not typical, I think,

Vicki Pettersson: [00:35:56] We’re so driven this society by productivity. Like you’re a success if you’re productive, you’re a success and, and I have found success outside of writing, and writing is a part of it. That’s great. But I just, yeah, I just learned the hard way you can’t put all of your eggs in that basket, they will break.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:17] That’s a really good answer to the challenge question. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:36:23] Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, there’s so many otherwise, why would you keep doing it right? Can I really, really technical? I just did a YouTube. I edited a YouTube video this morning that’s gonna go up tomorrow. I love three-act structure. I love structure. I’m a structure junkie.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:40] Me too.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:36:41] I love planning, I love pre-planning, I love brainstorming. I love mind mapping, I love drawing, I love just gathering all of the flotsam and jetsam you know, of the story into my mind and just because it’s still perfect. Yeah. It’s still potential, right? It doesn’t, I haven’t really read it yet. But to hell with crappy words. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:08] I do love that feeling. So you’re a plotter then?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:37:11] Such a plotter. Yes. But I am also found. Okay, so this has been interesting, I will plot out the whole thing. And then I will, I got in at the beginning and the end for sure, right. Some tent pole scenes, and for the three-act structure. And then I will get about a hundred pages in 65 to a hundred and let’s say that first act done, and then I have to re-plot the you know, second and third act again, and then I’ll get the first half of the second act done, and then I’ll have to re-plot again and then I’ll do you know,

Rachael Herron: [00:37:44] That’s exactly what I do. That’s exactly what you.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:37:46] You do? So

Rachael Herron: [00:37:47] Yeah. I don’t, I don’t plot a lot ahead of time. I know the tent poles and that’s just about it. But everything I knew about the tent poles, every time I hit one,

Vicki Pettersson: [00:37:55] yes,

Rachael Herron: [00:37:55] it’s all out the window and I have to redo everything.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:37:57] Yes. So I, I I’ve stopped. I used to be over, over plotter, you know, I need to know every single scene. And now that’s a waste of time because I’m going to chunk it anyway. The ending never changes, ever. Do you know what something else I do, that’s really weird? I will write, I will get all the way up to the climax and then I – to first draft so it’s-

Rachael Herron: [00:38:21] You know what you broke right there and I really want to hear it. You go all the way up to the end, then what?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:38:26] All the way up to the climax, the climactic scene, I’ll either jump over to it to denouement and write that, or I will just not write it and go back to the beginning.

Rachael Herron: [00:38:35] That’s hilarious. That’s exactly what I do.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:38:36] For real?

Rachael Herron: [00:38:38] Exactly. And this is what has happened and the only reason I do it that way now is because I used to spend like an extra month trying to write the ending.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:38:45] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:38:46] And then I would just give up, start from the beginning, revise a whole thing, and then I’d know the end. And now I just know that’s part of my process. I get to that point. I go, I can’t do it. I cannot do it. And I, for me, I think that I have to get to know those characters with that first big revision. And I’ve usually put them into such a pickle. But if I could easily write those scenes and I’ve done the book of the service anyway. I wonder I can’t write it, I put their backs up against the wall and I don’t, I don’t even know how to fix it until I find that revision.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:39:12] Yeah. Everything’s still too tangled.

Rachael Herron: [00:39:15] Yes. Yeah

Vicki Pettersson: [00:39:16] So for instance, and I’m sure you do this too. When you get like a quarter of the way through or halfway through and something new pops up and instead of going back in lieu of going back and rewriting it, you just keep writing as if, you know,

Rachael Herron: [00:39:32] Exactly.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:39:33] Right. Okay. So then by the time you get to that ending, it’s all tangled. It’s a mess. And so my brain, I will say this I’m like, it doesn’t feel good in my head. I need to untangle all of those threads and put everything in its goddamn place

Rachael Herron: [00:39:50] in that big second draft.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:39:51] Yeah, am I allowed to curse?

Rachael Herron: [00:39:53] Yes! Absolutely. That horse has left the barn.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:40:03] Literally I don’t do that on Youtube channel so but, but, yeah. Okay. That’s how I do it.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:07] That’s so funny that we’re so similar.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:40:09] Yeah. That makes me feel good.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:12] I know, me too. Okay. So can you share a craft tip with us of any sort?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:40:18] Craft tip. I mean, okay, so one idea for a book, if you’re a beginner and you think I’ll have this great idea, one idea is not enough. You need a great idea and another actually equally good idea and then you need to match those up, and hopefully there’s a third idea that you can shove in there. Like, I don’t think it’s enough to have a good idea. I had an idea about a you know, a PI who went back to solve his own murder and then I had been writing in paranormal. So obviously that’s a paranormal. He was an angel. Okay. So we got an angel, we got a PI and I’m talking like Dick Tracy, I’m talking like, Spencer Tracy, and Katherine Hepburn, like dynamic. I wanted that, but I couldn’t figure out. So I had these two really good ideas that I could smash together, but it wasn’t working. And so, and sitting at the desk all day long was not helping me. So one day I was out running errands and I went to, do you know the story?

Rachael Herron: [00:41:26] No.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:41:27] Okay. So one day I was out running errands and I, I was going to Trader Joe’s and there was a hair salon, one of those cheap super pads or whatever it is right next door. And again, like, I don’t like making plans. And so I won’t, I won’t look at my hair. This is sad. So, but I’ll walk in. And so I walked in and there was a guy I’d never seen before, never met. And I handed over my hair to the person and but I walked in and he had this full sleeve of tattoos and you know, cherries, and doves, and he had he’s wearing a guayabara and he had cigarettes rolled up on his sleeve and cuffed jeans and I’m like, and Pmod in his hair, and I’m like,

Rachael Herron: [00:42:10] Wow.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:42:12] I was like, what are you? What is this? And he’s like, I’m rockabilly, my girlfriend and I need a full-on rockabilly lifestyle. They were, and I was like, tell me more. And so there was my love interest, a modern day reporter rockabilly girl, who could not only understand this guy from the fifties, but like idealized

Rachael Herron: [00:42:33] Yes

Vicki Pettersson: [00:42:34] Love cannon and he would love her. I know, I would chill again and so I walked out with my really good idea, which is really three ideas. And a really lopsided haircut.

Rachael Herron: [00:42:45] I will say the last time I ever went to Supercuts, I ended up crying for like four months. It was so bad,

Vicki Pettersson: [00:42:53] I can see that

Rachael Herron: [00:42:55] but that is amazing. I love that because I really feel like a lot of us, when we start books, we have that one good idea and more starts to come to us. And I always feel like it’s a product of our obsessions too. Like, and there’s that feeling that, and I don’t know if you have this, but there’s a feeling like, well, maybe my next book will be about rockabilly people and there’s that feeling to push it away, like I’ve got to save it. I could save that for something else and my answer to that is never saved anything.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:43:18] Never save anything because you, by using it, you make room to fill up with more experience and more, just more.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:25] And it always backfills. It always, there’s always new stuff rising to the surface. If you are using what you’re given by walking into the Supercuts,

Vicki Pettersson: [00:43:35] You won’t be able to write fast enough.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:37] That’s gorgeous. No, I love that story. Thanks Trader Joe’s for having, for having that place. Oh goodness. Alright, so what thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:43:53] Okay. I don’t like this answer. You won’t like this answer. Nobody likes this answer.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:56] I can’t wait.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:44:00] Exercise. I know!

Rachael Herron: [00:44:02] I went for a run this morning and it felt really good. And I haven’t been for around like two years.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:44:07] I hate that

Rachael Herron: [00:44:10] It makes everything better.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:44:12] I know. And so you feel better afterwards, like writing, you learned about perseverance, like writing, you have to keep going and just one more step, one more word, when you don’t wanna like writing, yoga will teach me, you know, to stay in the pose. You know, you’re stuck, like not downward dog, cause that’s fun. But like your stuck in triangle pose and you’re like get me out of here. And –

Rachael Herron: [00:44:37] And if you’re in a class, right. And that’s what I miss about going to classes, because I’m stubborn into someone else can see me

Vicki Pettersson: [00:44:44] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:44:45] and it hurts. I’ll stay in it all day. But at home I’m like, oh, maybe I could get out of this pose.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:44:51] Me too. Yes. So that teaches you about breathing through it. Right, sticking with it. When I ride a bike, I pretend that I’m in the tour france. I’m like, I’m the only woman ever to be in the men’s tour france because there’s something about my body that is just special. And like, I, you know, like Simone Biles, like there, she has an extra gear, that’s me as a woman in this tour de

Rachael Herron: [00:45:16] And there and you’re going so fast that you can’t even see any of the other guys

Vicki Pettersson: [00:45:20] Guys are like they’re just so upset because I’m like writing and yeah then the music gets more in my ear and I, and so it teaches me about imagination. And that I’m a little bit of a moron, but that’s okay. It’s-

Rachael Herron: [00:45:35] Yoga and biking. Any other thing that you do?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:45:37] Yeah, well, I don’t run anymore because it hurts. And so, what else do I do? I used to play tennis. They don’t do that because my child cannot beat me. So that’s not fun. Super competitive. Yeah. Competitive, anything air hockey I’ll do that, I’ll just. But I like shake the whole table and yell and scream and I throw the paddle at my husband’s head and like, it’s that very active. Yeah. Writing is an active process for me. So like when I’m revising, like I’ll print out a scene and then I’ll put it, spread it out on the high counter top, and I’ll paste, I’ll walk in between, over here

Rachael Herron: [00:46:17] Oh interesting

Vicki Pettersson: [00:46:18] and I can go and sit back down and you know, key it in. But I need, I know it’s active. I’m up and down, I’m moving.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:25] It’s so healthy.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:46:28] I mean, I’m cursing,

Rachael Herron: [00:46:35] Yeah. Also healthy

Vicki Pettersson: [00:46:36] No not really mentally healthy, but yeah, just movement seems to help. So that’s my terrible answer.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:40] No, I think it’s a great answer. And it’s one that I think I would hear more often, but I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it on the show so, glad you said it. What is the best thing you’ve read recently?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:46:51] I’m reading a lot of YA and buy so many YA books and like here, my child it’s for you. For me, it’s so much fun. So I read Maggie Stiefvaters’ The Scorpio Races

Rachael Herron: [00:47:08] How you say, say her name? I never knew that. How was it? I haven’t read her in a while.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:47:12] Oh, but you have read her before?

Rachael Herron: [00:47:14] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:47:15] Lyrical and magical and a writer she’s just writing at the top of her craft. Right. It’s awesome. It’s so awesome. It’s set on this fictional Island where every November, there’s this brutal race. These people raise water horses, but they’re deadly water horses, they take you know, they eat flesh and they, they try to bite the other horses and the other racers, but you know, it’s a lot of money. So, the two protagonists, it’s the dueling protect, not dueling, alternating, dueling, alternating protagonists, and both first person. And, obviously they’re the love interests and they do fall in love, but they both had their own agency and you want both of them to win and they can’t and therein lies the tension.

Rachael Herron: [00:47:58] That’s perfect.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:47:59] Masterful. She’s masterful

Rachael Herron: [00:48:00] Is it a beginning of a series, or is it a standalone?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:03] Standalone. So you can just get obsessed and not, knock right through it. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:09] I’m going to put that to the top of my TBR pile cause I haven’t read her in a while and she’s so good.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:13] She’s so good. And she’s like, I feel like she’s too- I want to be friends with her, but she’s too cool, like she’s kinda like tough and like a tomboy and

Rachael Herron: [00:48:23] she has her own tarot deck; you know?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:27] Tarot deck, she plays the bagpipes, she’s an artist.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:28] I didn’t know that

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:30] Yeah

Rachael Herron: [00:48:31] She’s a fantastic artist. What else? Oh, she builds and drives muscle cars. I mean, like she’s insanely cool. She’s very like singular and I always wish I were that singular. I don’t feel like I’m

Rachael Herron: [00:48:45] I think you are Vicki. I think you are.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:47] I don’t feel like I’m that singular

Rachael Herron: [00:48:49] I think that listeners should go check you out and then they will know how singular you are, which is amazing. So tell everybody where you can be found.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:48:59] Well, I hope you do come and check me out over on YouTube because that’s what I’m really trying to do there is build a conversation in a community and if you have questions or comments or anything, you want me to make a video on something just for you, I will do that. It’s, it’s fun. It’s another form of storytelling, but it’s short form.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:19] Yeah

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:20] You know, it’s very fast and I get a nice adrenaline hit and it’s-

Rachael Herron: [00:49:25] And you’re so engaging, you’re so engaging and you’re so smart about everything that you’re saying.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:29] Oh gosh, thank you. Coming from you, that is an amazing compliment. I just think, I’m so happy that we’ve met and we’re in a mastermind together because then I can pretend your mind is my mind and

Rachael Herron: [00:49:42] I could share all of that.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:44] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:45] Excellent. So where’s your, where’s your website? Is it Vicki Pettersson?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:48] Yeah. VickiPettersson.com it’s just in there, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:52] Two T’s and two S’s

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:54] Yes

Rachael Herron: [00:49:54] Right?

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:55] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:56] Thank you so much for being on the show.

Vicki Pettersson: [00:49:57] My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Bye everybody!

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

At the Beach House

December 18, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not now.

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

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

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

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

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

But now, right this very second?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth is: I don’t deserve it.

And at the same time, I do.

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

Therefore, I belong everywhere.

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

I am, frankly, a goddamn miracle.

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

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

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