Archives for March 2021

How do you write dark? Like, REALLY dark? Abigail Dean tells us.

Abigail Dean works as a lawyer for Google, and before that was a bookseller. She lives in London, and is working on her second novel. Girl A is her first novel, just out in the United States after a competitive international auction that saw the book sell in 25 territories. It’s been optioned for TV rights for a limited series with Johan Renck, the Emmy winner from HBO’s critical and commercial hit “Chernobyl,” attached to direct.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #224 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m so pleased that you are with me here today to talk to Abigail Dean. Y’all, this book rocked my world. This was such a great book and it was so dark and it got me really excited about reading dark again. You know, 2020 kind of took a little bit of a, you know, the glow off of darkness? Is that a thing? I’m not even going to rerecord this because you understand what I mean. Like, I didn’t really want to read that dark in 2020, but I tell you what, 2021 looking a tiny bit brighter, the tiniest and I’m back into reading dark thriller. So, I will speak to, what’s been going on around here for just a second, and then I want to go back to talking about Abigail Dean before we start talking to her.  

[00:01:10] So, personal update around here, I’m just chugging along. It feels really, really great, as I have said multiple times, to be well enough to be back in the chair. I am working on, it feels like a million different projects at once, but I am doing it in big chunks, according to my new schedule, which is just brilliant each day that I’m on. For example, today’s Thursday, talking Thursday. Each day that I’m on, I always decide that it’s my favorite until I get to the next day when I decide that that’s my favorite. So I think that’s a really, really great sign as to how things are going around here. I did finish the read for revision of the Quincy book and I’m plunging tomorrow into starting to write a synopsis of it, which I will use to guide our revision eventually. And I did a bunch of work on this nonfiction book yesterday. Things are just going really well. Knock all the wood that is around. 90 day classes are going great and my students are just kicking ass and they’re getting stuff done and I’m really proud about them. Proud about them? Yes. I’m proud of them as well.

[00:02:18] How about you? Are you getting your work done? You are listening to this podcast because you are a writer. I know that. So, if you’re not getting any work done, try to get some done. Just a little bit crappy first drafts are what we make people. That’s what we do. They’re not going to be good. I say this all the time, because it takes a long time for this really, really to sink into people’s brains. It took me, being a professional full-time writer, for years before it sunk into my brain. Oh, that my crappy first drafts, they were never going to be good. I was never going to finally get good enough to make a good first draft. It doesn’t happen. Crappy first drafts are what we do or what 99% of writers do. So, write some crappy first draft words and then tell me about it. Okay. So we’re going to go back to talking about Abigail Dean. This book is called “Girl A” and I talked to her about the prologue, which I thought was fascinating. It’s very short. It’s one page. And I asked her permission to read this to you, and then we’re going to talk about it in the interview and you can see what she does with this, but, oh, it’s good. No spoilers. Again, this is just the first page, prologue of the book. 

[00:03:44] You don’t know me, but you’ll have seen my face. In the earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels right down to our waists. Even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the story and his protectors grew weary. And in the danker corners of the internet, we became easy to find. The favored photograph was taken in front of the house on Moorewoods road, early on a September evening. We had filed out and lined up. Six of us, in height order and Noah in Ethan’s arms while father arranged the composition. Little white wraiths squirming in the sunshine. Behind us, the house rested in the last of the day’s light, shadows spreading from the windows and the door. We were still and looking at the camera. It should have been perfect. But just before father pressed the button, Evie squeezed my hand and turned up her face toward me. In the photograph, she’s just about to speak and my smile is starting to curl. I don’t remember what she said, but I’m quite sure that we paid for it later. 

[00:04:53] Oh, okay. And then the next line, that’s the prologue. The next line is I arrived at the prison in the mid afternoon. Tell me that you would not have to keep reading that. That prologue just knocked me out and I wanted to talk to her about how she came up with it, what it meant to her, how she does this. It’s one of those things that, you know, I went back to kind of take apart. There’s a “sweetness” to it, you know, a childlike sweetness at the end when she’s smiling at her sister, but there’s also that foreboding sense of menace and dread that just hangs over it. I just think she is phenomenal. So let’s leap into the podcast now and you’ll be able to hear me talk with Abigail Dean and, I think you all should read Girl A. Right, I also think you all should be doing your own writing, which is why you’re here while you’re listening. And, I know that you can do it. I know it’s hard and I know that you can do it. All right, happy writing.

[00:05:59 Hey, is resistance keeping you from writing? Are you looking for an actual writing community in which you can make a calls and be held accountable for them? Join RachaelSaysWrite, like twice weekly, two hour writing session on zoom. You can bop in and out of the writing room as your schedule needs, but for just $39 a month, you can write up to 4 hours a week. With our wonderful little community, in which you’ll actually get to know your writing peers. We write from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Thursdays and that’s US Pacific Standard Time. Go to RachaelHerron.com/Write to find out more.

Rachael Herron: [00:06:40] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Abigail Dean. Hello, Abigail. 

Abigail Dean: [00:06:46] Hi, Rachael, thank you so much for having me on as well. 

Rachael Herron: [00:06:49] I was, I was just bending your ear with what I thought about your book, but I want to talk about it a lot more today with a little intro here. Abigail Dean. Wow. I’m very excited. Abigail Dean works as a lawyer for Google, and before that was a bookseller. She lives in London, and is working on her second novel. Girl A is her first novel, just out in the United States after a competitive international auction that saw the book sell in 25 territories. It’s been optioned for TV rights for a limited series with Johan Renck, the Emmy winner from HBO’s critical and commercial hit “Chernobyl,” attached to direct. So, first of all, just, wow, flipping wow, I loved your book, couldn’t put it down, at all. How are you feeling about all of this like, sudden critical, big attention, just blowing up in your face? How does that feel?

Abigail Dean: [00:07:42] So I’m probably just going to sound completely, inarticulate. Because I, like, I don’t know really how I feel like I think I’m still in a bit of a state of shock. And you know, I think the shock is like 90% joyful and 10% terrified, I’d say. Like the best thing is, the characters being out there in the world and people getting to know the characters and, you know, as a reader like of my life, I’ve had known, I have so many relationships with so many characters, you know, you feel like I’ve loved them and I have detested them. And I think that hearing from readers that they have felt that way, about the characters, that’s the best feeling in the world. So yeah, kind of, a lot of joy, and then I think, inevitably a tiny bit of terror because there’s some exposure, of course, in terms of, you know, a small piece of your heart being out there. It’s a strange feeling as well.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:48] And Lex, the main character is so perfectly drawn. And without any spoilers, I will say that at the 25% mark, after we have, I was trying to figure it out as a writer, you know, why did we just go from first person into this third person? Why, why am I, why am I here with this male character? And then, Lex communicates with him at the very end of that scene and says, hello. And I burst into tears, at the 25% mark. Like that doesn’t ha, I don’t cry in books anyway. I just thought it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was such. It was also such a dark book that dragged me through it. And I am a, you know, a psychological thriller junkie, I read them all. I’ve almost been feeling bored lately. I feel like I’ve seen all the angles and yours was fresh and new and beautifully, absolutely beautifully written. The way that you write characters is stunning. But what I wanted to talk about real quickly first is just before in the intro, I will have read the very short prologue to your book. And I wanted to read it because I think it is an absolutely brilliant way of capturing the reader’s attention and giving them just enough information to peak their interest in a way that is, it is absolutely impossible not to turn the next page because we must know more. And this is a very technical question, only the writers will be interested in it, but at what point did that scene arise? Either being written or when you knew it was the start of the book? 

Abigail Dean: [00:10:21] It was there from the beginning. It was like the first scene written. 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:26] Holy crap. 

Abigail Dean: [00:10:26] Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:10:27] I was sure you would say like, no, that was impossible to come to. That’s amazing. 

Abigail Dean: [00:10:33] I think that what the reason, like the reason behind it was, I am a true crime junkie, you know. I’m like, I’ve listened to the podcasts, I’ve watched the TV shows. And I, you know, I think often in these cases there is this defining photograph or this defining image. And that’s how you know, that the people who were involved in that, in that instance, that’s kind of what these human beings, I think, sometimes are almost like reduced to and compacted into like these images that we kind of remember for years after. And I think in a way I wanted it to be like, sometimes that’s the end of the story, and that’s all you, that’s all you get. But in a way for, yeah, so for Girl A, I was, I wanted that to be the beginning of the story and then, everything that comes after the, you know, the rest of the novel is how the Gracie family, you know, who are they really? You know, this photo is such a, it’s defining, but at the same time, it’s completely not defining it. It’s like the tiniest tip of, of this iceberg of them, of what they’ve been through and, and the people they’ve become as well. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:53] So, okay. I love all this. So for a debut novel, did not read as a debut, it read as I, and I feel like I am, you know, covelling and waxing repsotic even too much, but it read like a masterpiece in thriller. Where is your writing history? I know you’re a lawyer, which is all writing and there are so many lawyers who then move into writing or the other way, is that part of it? Or where else do you come from in writing? 

Abigail Dean: [00:12:19] So I think it’s, I’ve been writing a lot since I was really little, like really, really little. And my, my mom has recently unearthed like some fantastic line of two pages of a four stapled together, I was like, yeah, this is my serious novel and I’m six. 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:36] How cute.

Abigail Dean: [00:12:37] Everyone has to read it. Yeah. It’s like, thanks mum, very much. Just what I, just I always wanted. And you know, I filled notebooks, with various stories and a lot of them were dark as well. I think, you know, in a pretty early age, I was sort of often writing once it was the soft toys. You know, basically someone’s had a bad time and then it was like the Barbies and they had a pretty bad time as well. And as a teenager, I also wrote a lot of fan fiction. Huge amounts of fan fiction.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:12] I don’t do it. That’s such a good training ground. I think. 

Abigail Dean: [00:13:17] Yeah. It’s one of those strange, strange things isn’t it? I don’t know if it’s, because it’s something that, you know, teenage girls often do and sometimes people like, well, your teenage girls, what are, what do they know? You know, fan fiction has, seems to somehow have a really bad reputation, but it’s an awesome way of writing and, you know, I can’t think of a, yeah. As a writer as well, they, I can’t think of a greater compliment in a way than people wanting to make your characters their own in a particular way. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:49] What was your favorite fandom that you were writing in? If you don’t mind sharing.

Abigail Dean: [00:13:52] No, that’s okay. I am. So I was a big gamer and I wrote a lot of like final fantasy. Fantasy seven and eight was my, was my light fandom at the time. And I still, they were still great. They are still great stories and incredibly inspiring stories that, yeah, I still like look back and I’m like, incredible inspiration.

Rachael Herron: [00:14:15] I just absolutely love that. Okay. So what, so you’re busy, you’re a lawyer where, where, how do you get the writing done? Where does this fit into your life? 

Abigail Dean: [00:14:24] So, for Girl A, I took some time off to start writing. It had been a case that in my twenties, I just, I basically just worked for at least sort of six, seven years, at that time, and I kind of didn’t write at all. You know, I would, I was doing like lawyer writing, so I was writing contracts and writing emails, many emails. But I kind of let writing slip away a little. And I was sort of coming with my 30th birthday and was like, why have you kind of abandoned this thing that you absolutely loved, you know, this long standing ambition and, and yeah. But more than ambition, I think, really just the thing that, you know, was probably for me, the most satisfying thing that I can do. So yeah, I decided to just sort of shake things up a bit and I left my job at a law firm, which we had incredibly demanding hours, lots of travel time, and spent three months, basically just sitting in my local library and, and starting to write Girl A. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:42] So it wasn’t even a, it wasn’t even a sabbatical. You, you quit, to do this?

Abigail Dean: [00:15:48] Yeah, I, I did. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:49] Wow. How did that feel?

Abigail Dean: [00:15:50] I had. So I should, I want to be totally frank. I am a risky, a risk averse, lawyer standard, and I had another job lined up at the end of the three months. So I didn’t, I didn’t kind of quit, without anything, anything waiting, but I did, I, you know, it felt. Even just having a three months where you’re unpaid and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna see how this goes. I sort of made a bit of a deal with myself that if I was going to do it, I had to actually write, you know. Like, I have as much temptation as anyone to lie in bed and read and then watch Netflix. And I was like, okay, you know, you’re taking three months off. You have to actually, show up every day, you know, it doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to write X number of words a day, but you do need to show up and try and that was the deal, for that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:49] Did you get most of the book done in that three months or was that the start of it? 

Abigail Dean: [00:16:54] It was the start. I had really grand ideas, you know, I saw myself like just getting this first draft, just getting it out in three months. And, yeah, that did not happen. I got about, maybe a third to a half of the way back and then it was another nine months of evenings and weekends and just, you know, just finding time, wherever I could. Like, I’m a big, I think a lot of the time I’d been quite precious about how I wrote. And I think one of the reasons I didn’t write in my twenties was I had ideas that I needed to be sitting in silence with like, you know, writing by hand, have like hours of time. And a lot of Girl A was written, you know, I would wrote on the note section of my phone. I wrote, you know, sometimes by hand, sometimes with a laptop, like whatever was easiest. And I think I kind of had to let go of those notions that the muse was going to like, come on, find me in my bedroom because yeah, it didn’t and you know, some scenes were difficult and challenging. I didn’t want to write them, but, yeah, it was, it was a much more mundane exercise than I had allowed myself previously to think. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 224: Abigail Dean on Writing (Very Deliciously) Dark

In 2016, Janna Ruth’s plans for the new year was one submission to an agent. By the end of the year, she had won a writing competition with German publisher Ueberreuter and was deep in the throes to publish a second novel with a group of self-publishers. That novel, a modern fairy tale retelling with mental health topics, went on to win the SERAPH Phantastikpreis. Since then, Janna has published more than fifteen books in German and English.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #223 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled that you’re here with me today to talk to Janna Ruth, who was a delight to talk to. And we talked about transforming trauma into art, which is something I think we do so often both in fiction and in memoir. So, stick around for that. It’s a good, interesting, deep conversation. I know you’re going to enjoy it.

[00:00:46] What’s been going on around here. What hasn’t been going on around here? Good things. I’m feeling lots, lots better still working on getting diagnoses and stuff and having tests and things like that. But I’m able to be in my chair happily all day, most every day of the week for the last a week and a half or so. So that has been wonderful to feel that energy again. And I must say that my new process that I shared with you last week, so I’ve been doing it two weeks is so cool. It’s so good. Oh my God! For me in my life where it is right now, it works very well for me to designate a day with a large task in it. Instead of trying to do a little bit of, a lot of dark, a lot of heavy time consuming tasks on one day, I’m breaking them up into days. So Mondays and Fridays are for working on my current project, which is right now in novel. Tuesdays are for teaching. Thursdays are for talking, doing stuff like this, making the videos for my classes and Wednesdays are for the creative non-fiction the memoir stuff that I do. And yesterday was a Wednesday and I had the best time. There’s always this sense of guilt. When I am working on non-fiction, when I’m producing episodes for You’re Already Ready, or writing essays for the Patreon, or working on the four different nonfiction books that I’m working on right now.

[00:02:16] There’s always this little voice nagging at me saying, you know, you should be working on one project and it should be the Quincy book, which is the book you’re focused on right now. How dare you do this? And to give myself a full day to do that and to give myself these full days, just to focus on one thing has been truly, truly awesome and liberating and makes me feel so happy. So I can recommend identifying one big task per day and trying to get it done instead of like, I’ve always done before trying to get 73,000 important things done in one day. So I may be the last person to learn this, but, you know, I got there. On Friday, speaking of this Friday, was a working on my current project day, and I finished the book. The tentative working title is Quincy Maddow Wants Her Stuff Back. And I finished the first draft. And what that means for me is I wrote the dark moment and I realized this is such a dark moment. She has lost everything now, and I, it’s a good one. So I can’t easily get her out of it. I don’t know how to get her out of it. It’s so dark that I need to take some time away from it. And for me, that looks like going back and starting my revision process. So it’s, I consider it finishing a draft, even though I always tell everybody to finish their whole draft and then have the satisfaction of writing the end at the end.

[00:03:39] I can’t do it, but I have to kind of cheat myself every time and say, nope, I got as far as I can and now I need to start revision. For me that is a complete draft. If I get to write the full dark moment, which I did. So on Monday I started revising and right now here’s my plan and it’s not conventional, but what my agent would like is for me to write out a full synopsis. So I’m reading the entire book with my revision process. And making a plan of what I want this book actually to be, because right now it is trash mountain. It is a pile of garbage. I am not being, I’m not a belittling myself, it is just not good. It is not readable, but in my revision plan, I come up with what the book actually is going to be. That is my revision plan. From there I can write her a synopsis, after that I’m going to write the first, I don’t know, three to six chapters. I’ll probably get up to the inciting incident and make those goods so I will revise them and then I’ll do some more revision and then I’ll do some more passes, kind of like I would do on a full book, but I don’t want to do that for this.

[00:04:49] I want to send her the synopsis and these first really clean, really good chapters, which she can then try to sell on proposal without the whole book being enhanced. If you’re a first time author, you cannot do this period, you can’t do it for fiction and you generally can’t do it for memoir unless you are, you know, Kardashian famous. So, but once you are established and you’ve already proven that you can finish books to deadline, that’s when you get to do this. It may not work. She may try to sell it and nobody bites and then I have to revise the whole thing and make it fantastic and then make it irresistible that we may end up having to go down that route. I hope not because number one, I like selling books and number two, I like revising to deadline. So that would be awesome. After I send that package to my agent, my next current project on the docket will be to do kind of the same thing for the terribly dark thriller that I told you about. Last week, which I’m not going to tell anybody about, but it is so dark, so horrifying that I want to read it. So I’m going to do the same thing right out of synopsis as best I can because everyone hates us synopsis, people. We hate writing them, editors and agents hate reading them. They’re dry, they’re dull, but you do the best you can. And then I’m going to write out three to six, hopefully fantastic chapters that she can also then try to sell and proposal when there’ll be awesome. Great.

[00:06:14] So those are the things coming up for me on my Monday and Friday writing days. Oh, other news. Let’s see, I had a BookBub, middle of January. I can’t remember exactly what it was. My amazing assistant Ed is a BookBub whisperer. And I just want to say, since the Biden administration came into office, I have sold so many more books. And I know that I personally have had just more bandwidth in my brain to read. Also I have more bandwidth because I’ve taken most of the apps off my phone, which has really helped with quieting some of the noise. So I’m enjoying that. Speaking of noise. I don’t know what’s going on in the streets. Sorry if you hear strange noises. Also in news, I have been getting some of my rights back for older books. I got my rights back for a Lichen Stitches, which is a collection of essays, that like in a memoir form. And that book came out in, I want to say 2012. So it’s been nine years. I’m really excited to get this back. The physical book went out of print maybe six or seven years ago. No one’s been able to buy that, but because they were still selling the digital version, and because I wasn’t diligent about trying to get my rights back, I’ve just been letting them sell the Kindle version, right. So that kind of kept it in print.

[00:07:36] However, now I have all of my rights back. They are going to un-publish Chronicle books is going to un-publish that book, and then I get to buy a new cover. I get to do editing. I get to add, I’m going to add two essays and an introduction, which will make it attractive for even people who bought the book in the past, who loved the book. Now I get to offer them kind of an added bonus value, second edition, which I will be able to offer cheaper than Chronicle books was able to, I think they’re selling it at 9.99 and I’ll probably sell it at 5.99 and I’ll make 70% of that instead of making 25% of net. So that’s exciting, it’s quite a bit of work to do, but I also got back the rights for books, one and three in the Cypress Hollow series, which was my first series. So this is my first book. I just got the rights back for How to Knit a Love Song and the third book. Very exciting, cause there’s five books in that series and I would love to be able to, and the fourth and the fifth book are mine in all countries, except for Australia where they own the rights. I might try to get my rights reverted there too. So then I would own all five outright, but right now I don’t have number two. 

[00:08:52] HarperCollins still has that and they have it because, in their declamation of rights reversion, they said, we will not revert these rights, because there are still books in the warehouse. And apparently as a term of this particular contract rights can’t revert. If they’re still holding onto books in the warehouse, why they have a ten-year-old book with physical copies, still in a warehouse that they haven’t remaindered total mystery to me. But I did something that I’m proud of. I wrote to them, I found out that there were 54 copies sitting in a warehouse somewhere and there’s this thing inside publishers called special sales and special sales will sell the books to the author. Generally, at 50% off, you don’t make any royalty on them, but you can buy them for that. And then you can sell them if you want it to or do what you want. So I wrote to the special sales department and I am requesting to purchase the 54 copies of those books, they are 13.99. So I did the math and if I’m paying half price on those I’ll end up spending $377. $377 to get all five books in under my control so that I can then set the first book to free and have Ed my assistant run BookBub’s on that and get them, get to drive them all the way through a five book series, that I’m proud of. I am super, super excited about doing this and I’ve already heard back from them and that is getting underway. So kind of big stuff happening around me, a lot of stuff. And it feels really good after having more than a month, basically off feeling so badly. 

[00:10:37] And now to have this motion around me, it’s delicious. I’m loving it. And I’m also trying to, I’m trying to rest before I need rest, which is if you’re a person like me, that does that, you don’t even understand what I just said, but I’m trying to learn how to do it resting before I need rest. And in fact, as soon as I finished this recording, instead of spending the hour that I would have free, that I would normally fill with Slack and email and all of those things that need to get done, because this is a long working day for me. I’ve been working from 8 and I’ll be working till 6:30 tonight because of appointments and coaching stuff. I’m going to go lay on the couch for an hour, even though my brain is saying, think of everything you could get done in an hour. Think of all the things you could catch up on. No, I deserve rest. I am worthy of rest. And even though I don’t feel like resting, it is good for me. So I’m want to do, go do it. Look at me learning. We can still learn people. All right, please enjoy this a wonderful interview with Janna. I know you will. I hope that you’re getting your writing done. If you are not, why not? Why not do 10 minutes today? Just to stick it to the man to show me that you can do it and then come find me on the internet and tell me how it went. Okay my friends we’ll talk soon. 

[00:11:53] Do you wonder why you’re not getting your creative work done? Do you make a plan to write and then fail to follow through? Again? Well, my sweet friend, maybe you’d get a lot out of my Patreon. Each month, I write an essay on living your creative life as a creative person, which is way different than living as a person who’ve been just Netflix 20 hours a week and I have lived both of those ways, so I know. You can get each essay and access to the whole back catalog of them for just a dollar a month. Which is an amount that really truly helps support me at this here writing desk. If you pledge the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts for me that you can respond to. And if you pledge at the $5 a month level, you get to ask me questions about your creative life, that I’ll answer in the mini episodes. So basically I’m your mini coach. Go to patreon.com/Rachael (R A C H A E L) to get these perks and more and thank you so much.

Rachael Herron: [00:12:57] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show Janna Ruth today. Hello, Janna, is it Jenna or Janna? 

Janna Ruth: [00:12:59] Either way.

Rachael Herron: [00:13:00] What do you prefer? 

Janna Ruth: [00:13:04] I’m German. So I originally picked a name that could be read either in English or in German. So it’s German, it’s Jana Ruth and English it’s Janna Ruth. So whatever 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:15] That is very sensible and clever of you. I like that. Okay. Let me give you a little introduction to our listeners. In 2016, Janna Ruth’s plans for the new year was one submission to an agent. By the end of the year, she had won a writing competition with German publisher Ueberreuter? Am I close at all?

Janna Ruth: [00:13:39] You probably top it

Rachael Herron: [00:13:39] And was deep in the throes of publishing a second novel with a group of self-publishers. That novel, a modern fairytale retelling with mental health topics, went on to win the SERAPH Phantastikpreis. Since then, Janna has published more than 15 books in German and English. Since 2016, you have published more than 50 of the books in German and English. That is so exciting. You know, that this podcast is about process and I really want to talk to you about process. How do you publish 15 books in the last four years? Let’s talk about your writing process, when and where and how and all of that. Now, first of all, you live in the country I am moving to, 

Janna Ruth: [00:14:22] Okay 

Rachael Herron: [00:14:23] In New Zealand, I’m a new Zealander as well as an American and we’re moving soon and we are considering Wellington, cause we love Wellington. So you’re there, you’re writing there. And how does it, how does it go? 

Janna Ruth: [00:14:36] Yeah. Well, I have the luck to be able to write full time, not because I can afford it, but because you know, having a husband, bought it and hopefully by the end of this year, I’ll be getting closer to actually contributing to the family money again 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:54] It’s excellent

Janna Ruth: [00:14:55] But until then I can, yeah, I can write until the kids have all the kids at school. So that’s gives me about six hours a day, and then I am a terrible night owl. So as soon as the kids sat in bed, that’s when my creativity hits and I, yeah, I write until midnight or later. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:16] Wow, what time do you get up? 

Janna Ruth: [00:15:18] During school time at 7:30. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:22] How old are the kids? 

Janna Ruth: [00:15:25] They’re between 5 and 10. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:26] How many kids? 

Janna Ruth: [00:15:28] Three. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:29] Okay. You didn’t say five or something. Shocking. Well of course you write at night. The rest of the time you’re probably just insanely busy. So are the kids in school and back in, in New Zealand, they have gone back to school, right?

Janna Ruth: [00:15:46] Not yet. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:47] Not yet.

Janna Ruth: [00:15:48] It’s just, yeah. So it’s pretty much one more week and they’re going to go back next Thursday. 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:53] And then when they’re in school, do you write during the day or is it just, are you just a night person?

Janna Ruth: [00:15:57] I do write during the day, but usually I use those day hours to do all the admin stuff and, you know, contacting people or I’m very bad with procrastinating. So I sit down and it takes, sometimes it takes me like three hours to get started. It’s just, 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:14] I feel that 

Janna Ruth: [00:16:15] I could be more effective. 

Rachael Herron: [00:16:17] I totally understand that. Okay. So, so this is a question that I’ve wondered before about people who write at night. Because I’m sorry, I’m just, I’m terrible at it. How does it go when you start to feel sleepy and you’re writing? 

Janna Ruth: [00:16:30] I don’t actually

Rachael Herron: [00:16:32] Okay. That’s the answer because I get this feeling like I am going to, like, my head is going to hit the computer.

Janna Ruth: [00:16:38] It’s really weird because usually, I mean, there are days where I’m like, sleep is a whole day and I’m like, okay, I have to go to bed early today. And so, and then 10:00 PM hits and I’m like wide awake and it’s really weird. And, yeah, if it’s writing, I think it depends a lot. Like if I’m in a flow, I can keep writing and pushing past the tiredness, which then probably hits around like one or two or, it very rarely goes past 2:00 AM, but yeah, it has happened this week. So 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:10] is that when you’re in a good flow and things are happening, is that tend to happen?

Janna Ruth: [00:17:13] Yeah. That was a really good chapter and I really wanted to finish it 

Rachael Herron: [00:17:19] And you write primarily speculative fiction, right? Yeah, you have a fantastic covers by the way, too. Okay. So do you write, you’re obviously right at home. Do you have an office or is that where you’re sitting here?  

Janna Ruth: [00:17:33] Yeah, that’s basically my office, in the back, that’s where my husband sits and plays games. So it’s not just for me. Pretty much, especially in winter because you know, New Zealand houses, aren’t the warmest.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:46] My wife is terrified about that. Yeah. So tell us more. 

Janna Ruth: [00:17:52] So, for some reasons the whole family then starts to move into my office. Gosh, it’s the warmest places 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:00] Also all the bodies in one room yeah. 

Janna Ruth: [00:18:03] It has really worked, yeah, it hasn’t really worked with closing myself off to have writing time or something. It’s yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:10] But you do okay

Janna Ruth: [00:18:12] We’ll stay out during the winter. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:13] You’re able to write with that kind of distraction around you. Some people find that it actually helps them. Does it help you or does it distract you?

Janna Ruth: [00:18:20] It does distract me. That’s probably why I’m more productive at night. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 223: Janna Ruth on Transforming Trauma into Art

Lisa Gardner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-three suspense novels, including The Neighbor, which won Thriller of the Year from the International Thriller Writers. An avid hiker, traveler, and cribbage player, she lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with her family. Before She Disappeared is her latest stand alone novel. 

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #222 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I am thrilled that you are here with me today, as I talked to thriller writer, Lisa Gardner, who I am a huge fan of. I have been having some excellent luck with reading some thrillers that are just setting my hair on fire. I just can’t stop thinking about them and what they’re doing with these books, craft wise and skills wise. So I know you’re going to enjoy that part of the interview with her. That’s coming up in a little catch up around here. What’s going on, I’m feeling better. Thank you all for your concern. Still no resolution still fighting, still fighting for a diagnosis, but getting closer to something. So thank you for your good thoughts. But I have been sitting up at the desk for most of all of the days of this week. Today’s Thursday, pretty tired, but I haven’t had to, you know, tap out and go lie down from pain. So that is truly exciting. I’m trying not to overdo it. I’m really trying to rest as often as I can. So I know I’m kind of getting a little bit better at doing that. I just put up a post at the other podcast, Youre-Already-Ready, about how to rest when you’re a workaholic and people are liking that one. I am not alone in this difficulty with resting. So if you’d like to hear that that’s at my other podcast, which is a very short hit, usually 5 to 10 minutes of something I’m thinking about. And the most recent one is how to rest when you are a workaholic at You’re Already Ready. 

[00:01:56] And writing wise, so I like to tell you about books I’m reading. I’m always reading something and lately, I’ve been reading a lot since the beginning of the year. So it’s been really fertile reading ground. And I finished, since we last talked, I finished a book called Make Time, which was, which I was told about I’m in, you know, take a drink if I mentioned Becca Syme. Here’s Becca Syme, I was in Becca Syme’s Patreon level, where you get together once a month with a coach, it’s a group session and everybody gets 10 minutes and you get to listen to everybody else talk and you get to ask a question during your 10 minutes that you would like help with. So I was asking kind of just how to use my strengths better. And, the idea of this book Make Time came up and I thought it was a good one, but I was saying to Ellie, who is the coach on the call. I was saying, I just have such a hard time making myself do all of the little things that I need to get done every day. Like how do I get writing done every day on a Tuesday when I teach all day and I’m focused on teaching, how am I supposed to get my writing done? Even though I do have a pocket of available for doing that. And she said, number one, read, make time. And number two, why don’t you do things on different days? And I thought to myself, of course, knee jerk reaction. I can’t do that. Everybody has recommended that I’ve tried that before that won’t work. And then I really started to think about it and I bought the book Make Time.

[00:03:30] And one of the things that happened to me when I read Make Time is I basically disabled my phone of any soul-sucking app. I got rid of Twitter. Tik-Tok, Instagram. I’ve never had Facebook. I, hold onto your hats, got rid of my internet browser. I got rid of my email and by getting rid of, I have a Google phone, so it’s actually impossible to get rid of either email or the internet, but you can disable them. So that if you try to use them, they don’t work. And it has been awesome. I have gotten so much more time back already. Which allowed me to read and finish the book. Basically I did, I took that action almost in the first chapter of reading that book, something I played with before, but it’s working great right now. And I realized that my goal is to write 2000 words a day.

[00:04:25] That’s generally it, when I’m writing for strapped words, I’m generally wanting to write about 2000 words a day. I write five days a week. I don’t wear it on the weekends if I can help it. So that’s 10,000 words a week. That’s a nice, respectable pace for me. And I realized though, and I didn’t work on if I didn’t write on Tuesday, where would those, where would I put those, those words? What if I wrote more on Monday? What if I wrote a lot on Monday? And at first I will tell you I had a migraine. I was on migraine medication and I decided that I was going to write 10,000 words every Monday. And I told my wife that at dinner and she said, I’m moving out. And I said, no, I’m right. I know I can do this. And about four hours later some of the migraine medication wore off and I went back to her and said, I’m not going to do that. Some people can write 10,000 words a day. I am not that person. Once I wrote almost 8,000 words in one day and I didn’t write it again for a week, I’m still recovering from it, but I know that I can almost easily write 5,000 words in a day. That is not a depleting level for me. I can do that in about three and a half hours or so, which is generally about the amount of time I tried to spend either first drafting or revising on a day. 

[00:05:37] So listen to this, my new sched- I love sharing my schedule with you because you listened to this show because you are a fan of processes. So my new schedule is Mondays are for writing, all morning until I hit 5k. I hit 5k early, done for the morning. And then in the afternoon, I could do whatever I want, which is usually like email and Slack and stuff. Tuesdays are for teaching. Wednesdays are for my nonfiction, which is really exciting to me. Right now, I am working on finishing this novel. But my nonfiction always has my heart, things like the You’re Already Ready posts, and my Patreon posts, and Revision of Replenish, which has just been sitting on the back burner for so long. And I don’t even want to confess this, but I have like three other non-fiction, creative non-fiction memoir-ish type books in the hopper. So Wednesdays are going to be for that. And I had my first Wednesday, this week of doing that and it was magical just to be able to let myself play in that space without feeling guilty about not doing the 2000 words of fiction beforehand. Thursdays are for talking. They are for things like this podcast they are for making the question and answer, answer videos, which take hours for my classes, because I love answering their questions Thursdays are for talking Friday is for writing again for the fiction writing. And that’s when I do the other 5k. I’m still getting the exact same number of first draft words written, but in a less frantic harried way, I, in the Clifton strengths, I have discipline. Discipline is very low and adaptability is very low. So once my day gets thrown off, I tend to drop all the other things. I drop all the other balls because one thing got knocked out of the way. 

[00:07:26] That’s just part of who I am. I don’t need to fix it. Cause those are my low strengths. Don’t need to boost those up. If you haven’t heard the Becca Syme episode, you should go listen to it. It’s so good. She’s amazing but what this lets me do is on the, I really love having a goal for a day, but I like getting there in my own way. And when I know that Mondays are for writing and Fridays are for writing fiction, I’ll get there in my own way. Wednesdays are for writing nonfiction. Fantastic. I’ll do some other things too. Yes. I’ve only been doing this for a week, but yes, I am so excited about how well it’s working and how well it’s fitting into my body. And that is because I’m thinking about the best ways for my process to get stuff done. I want you always to be thinking about what is the best way for your process, the way that feels good and organic and natural and not like you’re fighting yourself every step of the way. I was getting exhausted from not only fighting myself every step of the way, but then losing, not doing what I wanted to do and then beating myself up and that is a vicious circle. One that I’ve been you know, dealing with for a very long time. And the more I am able to break that the better, we don’t want to be beating ourselves up. We want to be healthy, happy writers who are taking care of ourselves and understanding what you need to get the writing done, is so key, so pivotal.

[00:08:51] So I encourage you to think about that. You might want to pick up the book, Make Time. It was one of those really fast reads about productivity that actually changed something. I did promote to you last week. What was the other one I was reading? Indistractible. I liked the first part of that book, but the second part of the book was just really predictable. Make Time, remained interesting to me. So I do recommend that one. All right. Very quickly. I’d like to thank new patrons. I can’t remember if I thanked Pam Rosenthal before, but she’s been on the show. You know how wonderful she is. Thank you again, Pam. And Laura Loner, increased her pledge and that means a lot to me. So thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you, everyone who supports at any level patreon.com/Rachael, it means so much to me, it’s like this little vote of confidence that you put in me as a human being. And it keeps me going on the hard days. It really, really does. Also the essay that I sent out this week on or this last week for my patron essay, it was about me really becoming a poet, stepping back into being a poet. And I don’t, I cannot remember when I have enjoyed writing an essay more. And I am glad that so many of you seem to have really liked it. And if you want to see that one, you could get it for just a buck by going over to Patreon, and then you would get access to like all the 48 essays that are over there that are currently unavailable anywhere else. And I’m always still working on that. And those are projects in the hopper. 

[00:10:20] I have not had any caffeine. I am just amped up on life and talking today cause it’s talking Thursday for me. When you listen to this, it’ll be Friday. I hope your day is a good Friday. If you’re listening on a Friday, I hope that you have been getting some of your work done. If you didn’t listen to the mini episode that went out yesterday, listen to that if you’ve been having a hard time doing the work, you’re not alone, getting writing done is hard. It is just painful. And it helps to remember that other people are going through that with you. So come find me on the internet, tell me how you’re doing and let’s jump into the awesome interview with Lisa. Okay, here we go. 

[00:11:02] 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: [00:11:19] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today. Lisa Gardner. Hi Lisa!

Lisa Gardner: [00:11:24] Hi, Rachael. It’s very nice to be here. 

Rachael Herron: [00:11:27] Oh, it’s such a pleasure to have you. I have been a fan for a long time. So when my publicist sent me the query would you, would you like to have at Lisa on the show? Yes! I really would! Plus, I get an advanced look at your new book, Before She Disappeared. So let me give you a little intro here. Lisa Gardner is the number one New York Times bestselling author of 23 suspense novels, including The Neighbor, which won Thriller of the Year from the International Thriller Writers. An avid hiker, traveler, and cribbage player. She lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with her family. Before She Disappeared is her latest, stand alone novel. I just realized my microphone wasn’t close enough to me, there’ll be able to hear. So welcome! On this show, we talk a lot about process and this is a show for writers. Can you tell us a little bit about your process and how you get all these books done when and where and how much? All of that good stuff.

Lisa Gardner: [00:12:26] Okay. So let’s start by just talking about how I wrote, you know, the making of Before She Disappeared. I actually really love these conversations and I think it’s fun to talk to writers because we all have a very different process. So the first thing for me in art is inspiration, you know, especially 23 books later, where am I getting ideas from? Me, it’s generally something from the headlines, real life. So in my free time, I watch a lot of crime shows, IDTV, all that kind of good stuff. So I either look like I am a serial killer or I’m studying being one, it’s either one or the other, and the keys Before She Disappeared. It was, I’d read an article on BBC about a real life woman who was frustrated by the number of women going missing on tribal lands. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:12] Wow. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 222: Lisa Gardner on How To Keep Moving Forward With Your Story

Rachel Lynn Solomon writes, tap dances, and collects red lipstick in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of the YA novels Today Tonight Tomorrow, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, Our Year of Maybe, and We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This (June 2021). She will also tell anyone who’ll listen that it really doesn’t rain that much in Seattle, where she lives with her husband and tiny dog. Her newest novel is The Ex Talk.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #220 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I am thrilled that you are here today. Today, we are talking to Rachel Lynn Solomon, and she has a little tip that blew my mind and maybe might help me change the way I first draft because my first drafts are really, really bad. And she gives us a tip that might help with how we look at some of the scenes inside our books. Plus, it was really fun to talk to her. She has a process very much like my own and her name is pretty great. So, it was just a delight talking to her. You’re going to enjoy that. What’s been going on around here? Well, I’m feeling a little bit better. This is really my first day, maybe my second day up all day sitting here at the desk, continuing to work. I took a little tiny break, but I didn’t need a big break. I’m still pretty tired, still working things out, still trying to get a good diagnosis and I’ve still got multiple tests coming. But feeling grateful to be sitting here, able to do my work. It feels really good. I wanted to mention that I’m reading a book called The Kindness Method. I love to read the self-help books. I just read the 12-Week year, which I really enjoyed. Which is kind of the way I already operate, but the 12-Week year really made me think, how can I do more, more, how can I do more? How can I do more faster? And The Kindness method says, what the hell? Why don’t you treat yourself well with the kindness and compassion that you deserve? And I’m really, really loving it. 

[00:02:07] The whole reason I started You’re Already Ready. I started that podcast. I’m writing the book slowly. One of the reasons that I started that, and one of the reasons why I do this podcast, and why I do all the things I do, like the teaching and all of that is because there isn’t enough encouragement out here in writinglandia. We do beat ourselves up too much. And I know that because I am an expert at beating myself up, it is, I could be a pro. I am a pro. I’m actually professional at beating myself up. And its just kind of obscene when I think about the stuff that I have said to myself in my own head, while being very sick while going through an lockdown for almost a year now while rough things are happening. And I still tell myself, why aren’t you getting more done? How can you possibly not be living up to your expectations? And if you do live up to your expectations, why can’t you make them higher? And I am just putting a stop to it. I am so good. I really know this is something I’m good at. I’m so good at helping other people stop that in their own creative life, or at least allowing them the space to remember that they are important and that they are already worthy and that they’re already doing a great job. Actually trying to remember that for myself and do it for myself is something I am making into part of my job now. Part of my job is being kind to myself and having realistic goals and being gentle and loving with myself around my work. I’m pretty good already being loving to myself in terms of my personality and even my body, which is a challenge for a lot of people. I’ve been working on that for a long time, but what I have not been able to work on or have chosen not to work on for many years is being kind to myself in terms of the work arena and this productivity model that honestly capitalism gives us, right?

[00:04:24] What are you worth if you’re not producing? And I had a month where I wasn’t producing. And it really shook me up. So the kindness method is pretty wonderful, really enjoying that book. So if you are a person who needs that kind of break, I would recommend picking it up. There’s a lot of exercises in it and I’m actually doing them. So that’s good. I’m also gone back to journaling daily because that gives me so much, it’s so silly when I don’t journal, like the revelations that I have on a daily basis are enormous just because I sit down and think in terms of Clifton strengths, which, you know, I love, yay, Becca Syme. I am input and intellection. I have to be thinking about things and it is easy not to think about things. It’s easy to go from task to task, to task without asking yourself the big questions of why am I doing this task? Why am I doing it this way? Why am I treating myself this way? So journaling is not something right now for me, that is optional. It is almost imperative to my soul to be, I know that sounds silly, but to be journaling, to be willing to be present with how I’m feeling and looking at that on the page has been awesome in a non-driven way. In a non you must do this, you must get X number of pages by 9:30 in the morning just in a, in a really beautiful way. I’ve made myself a cup of coffee and I sit down with my journal and it has been great. So if you have forgotten to be kind and gentle to yourself, if you have gotten yourself into a place where your productivity or the speed of your productivity is getting you down, take a deep breath. You are just fine. You are doing great where you are. You can always change things to make them feel better to hit your goals. That’s important. However, being kind to yourself I think is more important. Honestly. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about this week. 

[00:06:38] Let’s see, I want to thank Mandy Stevens for supporting me on Patreon. Thank you, Mandy. Mandy and I have been friends for a long time and it really means a lot to me that you support me there. It really means a lot to me from all of my patrons. Thank you so much, always, always for helping me do this job. I’m about to write my next Patreon essay and that’ll go out this week and is going to be a good one. I’m really excited. I’ve I’m, I’ve been writing it for a little while now and can’t wait to send it. So if you ever want to learn more about those, you can always go to patreon.com/Rachael. Otherwise let’s jump into the interview with Rachel Lynn Solomon. You’re going to love it. Okay my friends happy writing. 

[00:07:20] 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: [00:07:54] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today. Rachel Lynn Solomon. Hello, Rachel. 

Rachel Lynn Solomon: [00:08:00] Hi, Rachael, it’s nice to talk to you! 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:03] Thank you so much for being here. I always enjoy talking to another Rachel, it’s fun to say. It’s weird to say the name. Do you ever feel, and this is a very strange question to ask, but don’t you feel that Rachel’s a very good name and like Rachel’s who inhabit Rachel’s are awesome people? 

Rachel Lynn Solomon: [00:08:18] It’s rare to meet a bad one. I’ve not met like a complete dud. I don’t think 

Rachael Herron: [00:08:22] Exactly! That’s what I’m saying. Okay. Let me give you a little introduction here. Rachel Lynn Solomon writes, tap dances, and collects red lipstick in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of the YA novels, Today Tonight, Tomorrow, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, Our Year of Maybe, and We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This. She will also tell anyone who listens that it really doesn’t rain that much in Seattle, where she lives with her husband and tiny dog. And so welcome to the show, your new book, and I’ve just, it’s just got out of my head and it’s not in your bio for some reason, The Ex-talk, read it. Loved it. 

Rachel Lynn Solomon: [00:09:01] Thank you. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 220: Rachel Lynn Solomon on Speeding up the Slow and Slowing Down the Fast

Ashley Audrain previously worked as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada. Prior to Penguin, she worked in public relations. She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. The Push is her first novel.

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

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

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

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #219 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I am so thrilled that you’re here, today, we are talking to the marvelous Ashley Audrain. I had the chance to read her book, The Push, which is out now, and you should get it. It’s so good. It’s so good. And she is delightful and charming. And so smart about all of this. And we talked quite a bit about what it is like to be doing writing during lockdown still, almost a year later. So stay tuned for that. 

[00:00:50] A little update about what’s going on around here. I am still sick, I still haven’t had an MRI, still fighting with insurance. It is a full-time job and quite disheartening. The thing that disheartens me the most, and I’ll only dwell on this for a moment is that I am a strong and mostly healthy and stubborn and well off. And I had, I have a partner who advocates for me too. I have all of these things and we can’t get the help that I need. And I am the exception to the rule. So many people in this country have no one fighting for them. Don’t have the resources, don’t have the means. Don’t have half of what I have, and they are struggling with bigger, worse things. And it makes me so upset at this healthcare system. Yesterday, we were kind of losing it and my wife came in my office and looked down at our old dog who is still happily with us and she’s curled up on my couch right now. But if she were not here, my wife pointed out, we would be packing our boxes right now. I am not saying in any way that New Zealand is a panacea. It’s not a cure. All New Zealand has its own problems. 

[00:02:08] But in New Zealand, I could get healthcare. We have excellent insurance. We have a high cost PPO top of the line, through lawless job and still just can’t get anything done. So, I’m struggling with that. But in good news, yesterday was also as I record this, the inauguration and we don’t have to deal with the previous person who sat in the white house because, he’s gone and it makes me happy. And yesterday was a good day for that. So, I thought the inauguration was beautiful. I thought the speeches were great. Yeah, it’s, it’s a good feeling. There was a real sense of relief that was lifted a sense of this burden that was lifted from us just a little bit. And it, we still have every single systemic problem that is in this country, but it’s actually being named now, you know, Biden said the words, white supremacy and domestic terrorism. He said those words in his speech, the moment of silence for those lost to coronavirus, like so incredibly moving and it’s just such a relief to have somebody taking this stuff seriously. So I take heart in that. 

[00:03:29] Oh, what else is going on? My classes started the 90 Days to Done classes. And I have to tell you, I can say this now because it’s Thursday, as I record Tuesday was the first day of classes. I had pushed the classes a couple of weeks because of my health and I was not sure I would be able to set up for those hours. Honestly, I did not know if I’d have enough energy to do the classes. And I did. Not only did I have the energy, but that night was the best that I have felt in more than a month. I had energy. I was bouncing around the house, doing things, dieting, cleaning, probably wear myself out a little bit. But it felt so good. I feel like I was a little vampiric perhaps like stealing some of my students’ energy. I don’t think I was, my whole goal in life is to give my energy to students, but there was some kind of exchange and it was beautiful. And I loved opening these classes and it’s going to be so fun to work with them on writing their books in 90 days or revising their books in 90 days. So that has been awesome. Also, I am actually writing again. I took like three and a half, almost four weeks off. Just could not write on my book while I was dealing with all the pain. 

[00:04:44] So, starting Monday, I got my butt in the chair and I’ve written every day since including yesterday, inauguration day, which was very difficult. But, I can’t- I don’t think I’ve said this on this podcast. I just can’t remember, but I have been reading this book Called The 12-Week Year, which is pretty basic. It’s about setting goals and moving toward them by calculating and watching your actions. But I have, I’m finding it inspiring. I basically, I live my life in 12 week chunks anyway, so this has been helping and I have some pretty big goals for the next 12 weeks. And it’s been great to be able to sit in the chair and get some writing done. And that has felt really good. I’m hoping to finish the first draft of the book I’m working on right now in the next two weeks. I think. I’m looking at my calendar. So that’s the goal. And I hope that I hit it. If not, I will rejigger, rejiggering is always an option, but I think I’m on track. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 219: Ashley Audrain on Getting Work Done During Lockdown