Rachael Herron

(R.H. Herron)

Archives for January 2022

Ep. 271: Cassie Roma on on How to LOVE the Blank Page

Cassie Roma is a powerhouse in the boardroom, in front of a camera, and speaking in front of local & global audiences on business & personal topics that impassion her.Passionate about creative content, social media strategy, the influencer economy, and storytelling across mediums both emerging and traditional, Cassie has literally lived & breathed the digital revolution. All the while steering the social media & digital storytelling ships for brands like Air New Zealand, and ANZ bank. She is the world’s first queer woman to have a starring turn on The Apprentice Aotearoa as an executive advisor to the CEO on national television. She is a published writer, author, podcaster, videographer, content creator, keynote speaker, TEDx alumni, event & conference MC, occasional blogger, mentor, Momma, Wife, and full-time #KindnessWarrior. And, after 18 years in New Zealand, this Californian counts herself as a proud AmeriKiwi. Her book, F*ck You Marketing: PS I Love You is out now. 

Ep. 270: How Do You Deal with Shiny Object Syndrome?

In this mini-episode sponsored by her amazing patrons, Rachael talks about dealing with the shiny writing projects that pop up just when they’re least needed, as well as how to decide between infinite writing possibilities, how to create resonance in the reader, dealing with overwriting tendencies. Also, how much research is enough? 

Ep. 269: Sarah Echevarre Smith on How to Hook and Keep Your Readers

Sarah Echevarre Smith is a copywriter turned author who wants to make the world a lovelier place, one kissing story at a time. Her love of romance began when she was eight and she discovered her auntie’s stash of romance novels. She’s been hooked ever since. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, eating chocolate, and perfecting her lumpia recipe. She lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband and her adorable cat, Salem. ON LOCATION is her most recent book. 

Ep. 268: Emma Brodie on How to Hit the Reset Button in Your Writing

EMMA BRODIE has worked in book publishing for a decade, most recently as an executive editor at Little, Brown’s Voracious imprint. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program, and is a longtime contributor to HuffPost and a faculty member at Catapult. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their dog, Freddie Mercury. Songs in Ursa Major is her debut novel. 

Ep. 267: Tiffany Yates Martin on the Secret to Writing a Good Book (Truly!)

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and author of the bestseller Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t (Berkley). Visit her at www.foxprinteditorial.com or www.phoebefoxauthor.com.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #267 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And I’m really pleased that you’re here today for so many reasons. Oh my God! So many reasons. The first is Tiffany Yates Martin. We had a chat. She’s the coolest. She is my friend now because we claimed each other as friends. And, you know, those moments when you find another friend and you claim them, or besties, even though we live very far apart now, farther apart than ever, but she’s amazing. And I love her approach to revision I have for a while now. And we really had a fantastic chat. So that’s coming up. 

[00:00:57] What’s going on around here? Well, if you’re watching on YouTube, I’m in my new room. In my house where I live in Wellington, there’s really not much to see. So if you’re just listening on the podcast, you’re not missing anything. There’s just a blank wall behind me, and a painting of a Fern behind me, because this is where I have set up my microphone. My microphone is set up again and y’all. Let me just tell you about the house. It is everything we dreamed about and more, it is incredible! The view from the windows is of the Wellington Harbor. Google Wellington Harbor if you haven’t seen those or go to my better yet, go to my Instagram, instagram.com/RachaelHerron and look at some of the views out the windows, from the kitchen dining room, Harbor. From Lala’s office, Harbor, from living room Harbor, from my office, it looks out into the little garden that is full of flowers. It is spring here and these flowers have just been growing on their own, just from the rain that have come. I went out earlier today and I picked flowers and I came back with an armful that will also be on Instagram. I will post that, including lilacs and my room right now, my office smells like lilacs and it is heaven, heaven. We’re up 48 steps on the side of a hill. 

[00:02:31] We changed everything around in the house, which was really, really fun. I mentioned that we are renting, but we bought all this stuff that Cassidy. Hello, Cassidy. If you’re listening, thank you! That Cassidy and Sam left behind because they moved to the states. So we bought everything and then we moved everything around. I was going to have the smaller, darker room for my office, and Lala was going to have this room here with a view onto the garden. And then we realized the smaller, darker room would hold the bed. Small dark rooms are great for sleeping in. So we both have these stunning big rooms with perfect views because I love a garden view. Honestly, if I had the harbor view, I would just be staring at boats all day and not get anything done. And I have a bed in my office, which I didn’t think I would like. It’s the spare bed and I love it. I put every pillow in the house and there were a lot of pillows. Thank you, Cassidy, on the bed. And it is now this big couch and I do my morning pages on it in the morning. I set up a monitor, which I have never had a monitor like this, that kind of faces at the foot of the bed. And I am currently doing romance author mastermind, which is a big conference and it goes all weekend. And so I’m just turning it on down there and cozying up in the pillows and taking notes on my iPad at this conference. And this house just feels wonderful. It feels like home, it feels like home. 

[00:04:06] We just got back from walking downtown to the Daiso, took about 45 minutes to walk there. And we took the bus home after we stopped at new world and got some groceries for dinner. And I have salmon cooking right now and my timer’s going to go off and just a couple of minutes so that we can eat dinner because we left the house on foot. We went shopping and we came back on the bus. I can’t even tell you. For so long, I have lived in a place. I loved Oakland with all my heart. I will always love Oakland. I’m an Oakland girl, but where we lived for the last 17 years, and for me last 19 years, we couldn’t walk anywhere. There was nowhere to walk. Even the liquor store had closed, and just walking with the dogs was really too dangerous in most of the parts, because a lot of blocks had off-leash dogs and it was just a hairy situation. There was nowhere to walk. So we would always drive about 20 minutes to go anywhere, to the grocery store to walk the dogs. Here you can’t drive 20 minutes. If you drive 20 minutes, you’re out of town. Driving downtown takes five minutes. It’s a big tiny city. 

[00:05:13] It’s a big city and it’s so tiny and wonderful. And I am just in love. I’m in love. I unpacked my suitcase yesterday. I haven’t packed both my stupid cases yesterday because I hadn’t done it yet. We’ve been here for a couple of days, but we’ve been just like organizing things. So everything I own is in the closet over there. It’s amazing. And, not unfortunately, but at some point, our boxes that we shipped over on the pallets on the ship will arrive there somewhere in Wellington. I don’t want them, I don’t want them. I have everything I need. I have all the clothes I need. I have, we have all the cooking things we need. How did we, why did we send these boxes over? I know most of mine are filled with books and journals and stuff like that, and I’ll find storage for them. But right now, I love looking at my bookcase and it’s got like nine books because I bought them here and I haven’t read them yet. 

[00:06:07] Oh, I’m just enjoying this feeling and really dreading all the boxes and we will hire somebody to bring them up those 48 steps. We have no furniture. I have one Cedar chest, that my mom gave me, but otherwise we have no furniture, just small boxes, but I’m not bringing them up. Oh, no, it was a chore just getting our big ass suitcases up those 48 steps. It’s heaven. I know it’s real life too. Now we’re going to live here and have a real life, and have troubles and heartaches and difficulties and irritations and all of those things. But right now, I’m not feeling any of it. I’m just giddy. I am giddy at being home for the first time in almost six months and able to relax for the first time since February, when we started doing all this and it is now November and it just feels really, really freaking good. So, now, I just get to shunt you into this interview that I had with Tiffany while I was locked down in Russell, up in the north wind of New Zealand. So in that beach house that I was in, and it’s a wonderful dock, so I hope you enjoy it. We’ll talk writing next week. You’re writing, right? If you’re not writing, get a little writing done. And I’ve been writing, I’ve been getting stuff done. It’s very strange. And now we’ll get more done because I have an office anyway, I’m going to quit waxing rhapsodic and let you listen to this interview with Tiffany. Enjoy, my friends. 

[00:07:30] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Tiffany Yates Martin. Tiffany, hello!

[00:07:37] Tiffany Yates Martin: Hello, Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased to be here with you. 

[00:07:41] Rachael Herron: We have been trying to get this particular interview done for a while and I am a fan girl of Tiffany and I want to tell you why. So let me give you a little bit of her bio first. Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers, and she is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and the author of the bestseller, which is a book I love, Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. She’s led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers’ sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she’s the author of six novels, including the upcoming The Way We Weren’t from Penguin Berkley. Wait, Berkeley is Penguin, right? Yeah. Okay, got that right. And so I looked at the cover of that, that comes out in November, depending on when this goes out, it might already be out. Congratulations on that. It’s a gorgeous cover and it looks like an amazing premise of, 

[00:08:43] Tiffany Yates Martin: Thank you. I love that cause it’s probably my favorite cover of my books.

[00:08:46] Rachael Herron: It’s incredible. 

[00:08:48] Tiffany Yates Martin: Except Intuitive Editing. 

[00:08:49] Rachael Herron: Intuitive Editing has a wonderful, wonderful cover. And to be honest, like let’s back up to how we know each other. I know you because I love revision like that is my jam. We both agree, you know, puke out that first draft and then make it something good. And, but I spent, so I spent so many years looking for help with revision, looking for somebody that I could throw to students, somebody who kind of echoed a lot of my own sentiments about revision. And then I found Intuitive Editing. Can you tell us a little bit about that book and how it came to be? How do you come to revision? 

[00:09:26] Tiffany Yates Martin: This is like one of the reasons I really vibe with you is because everything you talk about on your show is so much, what you just said is everything I wrote the book for, because there’s so much out there about how to write. There’s so little out there about how to revise and edit your own work. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 267: Tiffany Yates Martin on the Secret to Writing a Good Book (Truly!)

Ep. 266: Sara Shepard on What Your Characters Might Say at a Cocktail Party

Sara Shepard is the author of over thirty novels, including the New York Times bestselling series Pretty Little Liars and the Lying Game, both of which were adapted for television on Freeform. Her latest novel is called Safe in My Arms. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: 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 #266 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re with me today as I talked to the awesome Sarah Shepard, and we talked about what might your characters say at a cocktail party and how can you use that information to help you write deeper, better, stronger characters. So stick around for that, I know you will enjoy listening to her talk about her writing.

[00:00:44] What’s going on around here? This is, again, going to be another short update. We are still in our last Wellington Airbnb and in four days, not eight, like I’m showing on camera, four days we move into our house, which is going to be great because then I’m going to have my own office. You won’t be able to hear my wife putting away the dishes as you can probably hear right now. And I just can’t wait. I can’t wait to be home. It has been five and a half months since we moved out of our house. And that is, that’s as long as I can make it, that’s it. We both have, my wife and I both have short timer’s syndrome now, and we are just ready to put something in a drawer and leave it there. On, this is a Thursday as I record. On Saturday, we go over and do the inspection with the landlord, and the people who live there now are going to show us how to work the funny stove and you know, how to run the dryer, those kinds of things. And then on Monday morning, we move in and, I would encourage you, if you don’t follow me on Instagram or, God forbid, Facebook, I do post pictures to Facebook from Instagram, but, I don’t like being there, but Instagram is a place I do like being, even though Facebook owns it, I will be putting pictures up there of what it looks like and what the harbor looks like from the dining room, and from the bedroom, from the yard. I know that you all know how excited I am.

[00:02:11] What’s been going on around here? Work-wise, I have been kicking ass at cleaning up those three books that I needed to clean up in order to republish and have all five in this series self-published. I was racing to meet that BookBub deadline and I am making it. I’m finishing the very last of the edits in the next couple of hours and sending them to my amazing assistant, Ed, who will then put everything up and have it ready to go. And that is such a weight off my shoulders. And I think I said this last week, but that means that instead of spending three months doing this, like I could easily have done, I spent two weeks. It was two intense weeks, I will give you that I have done nothing but edit, when I’m not teaching, but then it’s off my plate and I can move on to the next thing. Instead of having this republication of this series weighing on me, it just got done because it had to get done. And that is the way I honestly prefer to live my life. 

[00:03:12] So that is fantastic. I think that’s really all that I have to update you on and it’s really echoe-y in here anyway. So let’s jump into the interview where it, hopefully will sound a little bit better. I can’t remember where I was when I recorded this with Sarah, but please enjoy the interview and next week when we catch up, I will tell you how it is to be living in a house that we don’t have to move out of in a week or two. So, that’s going to be great. Wherever you are, I hope that you were getting your writing done and we’ll talk soon, my friends.

[00:03:47] 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 binges 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 at the $3 level, you’ll get motivating texts from 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!

[00:04:46] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to this so. Shit. I’m going to start all over again. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Sara Shepard. Hello, Sara!

[00:04:57] Sara Shepard: Hello! How are you?

[00:04:59] Rachael Herron: So nice to see you, I’m fantastic. I’ve already told you, but I’ll tell everybody else. I’m in the bathroom. I’m in the bathroom recording studio of the hotel in Auckland, New Zealand. But I’m so thrilled to talk to you. Listeners have perhaps heard you before, because I did play on the podcast, our interview, that you chat, for when Hush Little Baby came out. So let me give you a bio, cause you are on the hot seat today. Sara Shepard is the author of over thirty novels, including the New York Times bestselling series Pretty Little Liars and the Lying Game, both of which were adapted for television on Freeform. Her latest novel is called Safe in My Arms. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, and I got an early copy of Safe in My Arms and it was so fun and it kicks off of my boxes of, I just have such a soft spot for that particular kind of book and those particular kinds of women. So thank you for writing.

[00:05:55] Sara Shepard: Oh, I’m glad you liked it. 

[00:05:57] Rachael Herron: My pleasure. It was awesome. So talk to us about. Let’s just start with your like, prolificness. You write a hell of a lot.

[00:06:07] Sara Shepard: Yeah. 

 [00:06:08] Rachael Herron: When and where and how do you get it all done? Because, I mean, what year did your first book come out?

[00:06:15] Sara Shepard: The first one came out, I mean technically, I was a ghost writer of other people’s books before I was a writer with my own books so, but the first book that was under my name came out in 2006. 

[00:06:31] Rachael Herron: Since then, have you also been done ghost writing and your own name or did you just go right to your name? 

[00:06:36] Sara Shepard: I’ve done a little bit. I’ve done it from time to time. Sometimes, if it’s like an interesting project or sometimes it is a, if I get a strange request from like, you know, years ago, I got a, and I probably, I don’t know if I should like talk about who it was, but I got this very strange request, like, and they’re chewing on a wig. This is the wig that I do for, like cameos. That’s like a creepy, and my dogs are in-

[00:07:10] Rachael Herron: If you can hear something in the background in

[00:07:14] Sara Shepard: they’re dogs, they’re big and they have decided to come bother me. But yeah, I have done a little bit of ghost writing, but mostly it has been my own stuff since then. But how do I get it all done? Oh my gosh. 

[00:07:33] Rachael Herron: What is your process? What is on a day on a, this is it’s a writing day. What do you do on a writing day?

[00:07:38] Sara Shepard: Yeah. You know, it definitely depends. I am one of those people and it started with me writing Pretty Little Liars and having to write those. So like, you know, I was on like a six month schedule writing those. 

[00:07:52] Rachael Herron: To write that. 

[00:07:53] Sara Shepard: Even before that, I, you know, I was used to doing like a lot of different things at once. I was working at a job. I was going to grad school. I was ghost writing novels. Like, I was always kind of used to doing a lot of things. So I am usually doing more than one thing. I sometimes look at authors who are only doing one project. Oh my gosh, these dogs.

[00:08:16] Rachael Herron: They’re fine. They’re a 100% fine.

[00:08:19] Sara Shepard: I sometimes look at others doing just one project. And I’m like, what does that feel like to devote all of your time to just one thing. So like, for example, today, I have a book that I, I’m about to give to my editor. It’s a first draft. It’s almost done. I have to do a little bit of the end, but I have decided to read through the whole thing to see what the appropriate endings should be. Cause I, that often sometimes happens where, and also, I mean, your listeners won’t see, but I like, print it out and then I have to edit myself on the page, which is completely different than just reading it on your screen and you’d get so much more out of it. So I did. And it’s like, it’s in some ways, my favourite part of the process and in some ways, so boring, because then you have to input all those edits and you’re just like, ugh, and it somehow takes forever. And it just, so that was like a good chunk of my day to day. But then I was also like, I’m kind of working on a ghost writing thing, for this podcast that is being developed into a novel. So some of that, so it was sort of outlining too. So, you know, my days are either working on a draft, working on an outline, or somewhere in between. I should probably spend more time promoting and doing social media and all that stuff, but that’s like my weak, my weakest link, probably. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 266: Sara Shepard on What Your Characters Might Say at a Cocktail Party