Rachael Herron

(R.H. Herron)

Archives for January 2022

Ep. 259: How Do You Actually Fast-Draft a Novel? Bonus MiniEpisode

In this bonus mini-episode, Rachael talks about how to actually break free from your outline and get down to the good stuff: actually fast-drafting. How do you start? What does skeletoning your work look like? When do you know you’re ready? Don’t miss this episode, brought to you by Rachael’s awesome patrons. 

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 #259, this is a bonus mini episode answering your questions. If you are at the Patreon level of $5 and up a month, you can ask me any questions you want. I’m only got one today, so it’s going to be a short episode, but it’s a good one. And it’s going back to my roots of what I really love to talk about. So let’s get into it. This is from Kate.

[00:00:41] Hello again, Kate. All right. She says related to her previous question which was the last mini episode, as I shared, I’m having a problem finishing drafts and hence, I’m working on my outline with story bits and mystery bits to hopefully finish my next draft for real. But I think I’m having another problem, which is that because a previous draft that didn’t work and I abandoned, I think I’m afraid to move beyond the outline and into the story. I’ve been trying to outline for weeks and I’ve run out of ideas, but I’m afraid to write because lost my place because I think I need to beef up my outline still more. How do I know when I have outlined enough? I think that fast drafting or skeleton drafting might help me, but I’ve never tried that before. My previous attempts at writing were fully fleshed out as best I could do with character dialogue et cetera. I would like to try a first draft in an effort to make my story and mystery mechanics work as quick as possible, then put the meat on it, but I’m feeling at a loss as to how to really do this. I think my perfectionism might be getting in the way and making me resist sketching something versus writing it fully.

[00:01:50] I purchased your book on fast drafting your memoir and I look forward to reading this for more info, but could you comment on this in regards to doing a mystery story? How does one go about fast drafting? Thanks so much. You’re the best!  No, you are the best, Kate. Thank you so much for asking this marvelous question. What I love about this question? In fact, I believe you said it straight up. Where did you say this? I think I’m afraid to move beyond the outline and into the story. I want to tell you that that is normal. We, many of us feel this way. Some people are just born pantsers and they would never consider an outline, no matter what they’re still doing, they’re still going to end up with good story structure.

[00:02:41] If they end up with a good book, the story structure happens without them making an outline. They’re just able to do that. I’m kind of in the middle. I like a very loose outline of the major plot points. And then I discovery write my way there to flesh out a story. However, I have done really carefully, very well plotted outlines and here’s the thing, no matter what, when you leap into writing the story, no matter how completely you think you have outlined, the story will always take over. Always, always, always, if you talk to the outliner who outlines every scene down to blocking and exactly, who’s going to say what basically they have their whole book written still, the book will jump out of the outline because as we write a story, we learn what the story wants to be. The story, the book is teaching us what it wants to be. And I mean that very literally what I mean by that is that you cannot outline enough. You will never be able to figure out an outline clearly enough and get the inspiration that you need to fill in the outline to perfection. Because you’re not writing the story. 

[00:03:59] Once you’re writing the story, the inspiration comes, the muse when you are actually writing, not outlining, but when you’re actually writing your terrible crappy first draft of any of these scenes, that’s when the muse shows up and that’s when your brain and sometimes the saying, oh, this is so terrible. But if you stick around and you ask that editor’s voice to shut it down for a minute and sit, the editor can sit in the room with you, but the editor can’t touch the keyboard. That’s just for you. That’s just for first drafting and the muse then is able to whisper something in your ear that she never would have given to you. When you were doing the outline, you’re not smart enough. We are- and I’m not talking about you Kate. I’m talking about we as writers. We are not smart enough when we are doing outlines to know what the book really wants to be. So your deep question here is how do you fast draft? How do you do that? For me, it comes, it always comes down to quantity and you can measure one of two, one or two things.

[00:05:04] For a first draft, many writers, I’m going to say almost most writers, I would say that most writers are aiming toward a word count. So if you tell yourself, when you look at your calendar, you figure out how many days you have to write this book and you want it to be done by X date. How many days does that leave you? How long has this book want to be? How much of your already written, how much is left, do some basic math and you find out that, okay, this is a good pace. If I want to be done on November 3rd, whatever your date is, I need to write 1500 words a day on my writing days. Fantastic. What happens is that you have to make yourself just sit down and write 1500 terrible words.

[00:05:45] It does not matter what the words are. Your story will progress. You already have an outline. So you are ahead of many people who want an outline, and this is important: You don’t feel like your outline is done because your outline is not done. And your outline is not going to get done until the book tells you a little bit more about what it wants to be. So you have to pick a word count and head toward it. It usually most people’s word counts are somewhere between 500 words a day and 2000 words a day. I can generally do up to 3000 words a day, although that’s pushing it for me personally, I have done up to 4 and 5,000 words a day on a regular basis. And that wears me down. For me I’m really in the 2000 words a day range. And that’s generally what I tried to do. The story we’ll keep chugging along because you keep showing up and putting words into it. Even if you don’t know what’s going to happen when you stand up and walk away from your computer.

[00:06:43] What I like to do when I’m fast drafting is always make a note of where I am when I stopped for the day. Maybe make a post-it carry it around where you can see it, put it next to the bed and ask yourself as you go to sleep. Okay. You know, she’s at the dump right now, dumping trash, which is what I did earlier today. Took the recycling to the transfer station. She’s at the transfer station. Something has to happen. And then I know she’s going to be in the diner. What’s going to happen between there and just kind of ask your brain that, you don’t have to think too hard about it. Just ask it once and then go to sleep. Your brain is going to be working on it at night. When you sit back down at your computer the next day, that’s when I take usually 5 to 10 minutes to brainstorm out kind of pre-outline my work for the day. Just for the day. 5 minutes maybe I break down what is going to happen in the scene a lot. Most days I have a better idea than I have the day before cause I’m fresh again. And my brain has been working on it overnight. I’ve got a couple ideas. And then I write 1500 words, 2000 words, very, very bad words, but they’re getting me closer and closer to where I want to be. And like clockwork, the muse always shows up and throws another idea at me. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 259: How Do You Actually Fast-Draft a Novel? Bonus MiniEpisode

Ep. 258: Kristan Higgins on How to Write Forward Without Looking Back

New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins has sold 4.5 million books worldwide and is published in more than two dozen languages around the world. Her two most recent novels were each selected as People magazine’s “Pick of the Week.” Kristan is also a cohost of the Crappy Friends podcast, which discusses the often complex dynamics of female friendships, with her friend and fellow writer, Joss Dey. Higgins lives in Connecticut with her family. Pack Up the Moon is her most recent novel. 

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 #258 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So pleased that you are here with me today, as we are talking to the always fabulous Kristan Higgins. She’s been on the show before; she’ll probably be on it again someday. We talk about, not looking back as you go forward in your work. I know you’re going to enjoy that interview. So stay tuned for that. What is going on around here? Well, we’re still at the beach house. We have one more full day. We have tomorrow as our full day here, unless we get locked down again, suddenly, God forbid, cause I’m ready to go. We are going to on Sunday, pick up and move and drive through Auckland. So let me break it down. All of New Zealand now, a little bit more than three weeks after the hard crunch lockdown at level four, that was lockdown as you get, you don’t leave the house except for a short walk and you can’t do anything else. You’re, you don’t go anywhere. You don’t see anybody. We were at level four, then we went to level three. Now we’re at level two. All of New Zealand is at level two, except for Auckland, which is still at level four. So we had one community case of COVID. It was a Delta variant. They locked down over that, within two weeks, there were 700 cases. They were all genome sequence. They were all tracked. They’re all being cared for. It’s up to about 800 now, but yesterday we only had 20 reported inside Auckland. 

[00:01:50] The only place that the coronavirus is right now is inside Auckland. And let me tell you, when you shut the city down and you don’t let anyone in or out. It can’t get out. It doesn’t get out, which is why the rest of us are at level two. And what level two is, is basically everything’s back to normal. It’s kind of like the states without the fear, because right now everybody’s back at work back at school, but you have to wear a mask when you’re indoors, except when you’re in a gym or eating in a restaurant. But the difference between being here and in the states is that, you know that no one around you has Coronavirus because they’re tracking the wastewater in these areas. They know from wastewater that right now, the only people with COVID-19 are in Auckland. 

[00:02:37] The New York times did an article about a week ago saying, is New Zealand dreaming? Is this an impossible goal to eradicate the Delta virus? It may be, it may be. But so far it’s working, it’s really working and it’s so exciting. So, we are allowed to leave Northland now and drive through Auckland if we don’t stop and you have to have a reason and you have to have an address that you’re going to. There is disagreement as to when you look at the newspapers, are you allowed to drive through Auckland for other than business purpose? We can’t say that our purpose is business to drive through Auckland but I asked the government, if we could do it. I asked on Twitter, I asked the New Zealand government who is in charge of the COVID response. I said, we would like to move from Airbnb to Airbnb and drive through Auckland without stopping. And they said, yes, you can. You’re allowed to. 

[00:03:36] So I screenshotted that in case. So there are, there’s police at the borders of Auckland. So I can show them that, but we were ready to move or going to Mount Montgomery, which is just outside of Tauranga or maybe as part of Tauranga, I’m not sure. And it’s a small surfing town and it looks beautiful and we are, we’re really ready to be in a place where we can walk somewhere and buy something because the, where we are right now, it’s about a 15-minute drive from town, which is fantastic. It’s the most beautiful 15-minute drive you’ve ever taken, but we’re looking forward to being able to walk and get a coffee and get groceries and, do all that stuff that we came here to do. When we leave on Sunday, we will have been in this house for a month. Which I cannot believe. But what that means is that Russell, we’re actually at south of Russell, we’re in but this area now feels like home. Like we put down roots here. It feels like this glorious beach house is mine. 

[00:04:40] And that’s going to be difficult because in Mount Montgomery, we were just renting an apartment. You know, it’s going to have normal windows that look out on normal window things like other houses and cars instead of the variable oyster catcher and the white faced Herron and the pied cormorants otherwise known as the pied shags. Which is definitely my next band name. I’m going to really, really miss this place. I feel like it’s gotten deep into my soul like some places do. I feel like I’m going to keep dreaming about this house and the walks, the long walks that I take out on the deserted road, in the high wind rain whipping around, like, I’m going to dream about this place forever. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to afford to come back and rent it. I found out that I just looked at Airbnb, cause we’re renting an under the table from this guy. It’s not under the table. He gets to run it to whoever he wants to at a very, very reduced rate. Like I’ve mentioned, although it’s still a little pricey for us and he rented for $500 a night in winter! It’s $1,500 a night in summer, so I doubt we’ll ever come back, but I bet we’ll drive down the road and walk down the beach and look up at our house. 

[00:05:55] I’m very excited that the fancy restaurant in town just opened and you can order online or by phone, which I did. And you order a day in advance and tomorrow night they are delivering like a five course meal to us, the fancy, fancy restaurant, like, you know, truffle glaze for genie muscles drawn from the sea kind of thing and delivery means are going to go to the end of the road and text us and we’ll walk out along the beach to go pick up our dinner and that’s delivery because we don’t have an address here. And it’s been wonderful and I’ve done so much writing. And actually today I’m just finishing, writing up my next Patreon essay. So if you are interested in Patreon and reading the essay about really what lockdown is like and what it feels like to be doing this as an American and as a New Zealand citizen. The differences that we have felt. I mean, they’re obvious but I really enjoyed kind of comparing and contrasting what we thought we were coming here to do, which was to be unstuck. 

[00:07:04] And we have been stuck in a couple of different places in the MIQ Hotel and in this house and how kind of wonderful all of that feels. And what does that mean moving forward? I think I mentioned last time, that we might have a line on a house in Wellington, which we might be able to rent and it’s got an amazing view. It would make up for losing this view. And my heart is just yearning toward that. So apparently no matter how footloose and fancy free, I want to be moving towns every week, I would like to not do that in a few months, maybe two to four or five months, I would like to rent a house and just settle down for a while and make some friends that is something I’m missing is just the chit chat that you have with your friends. And I would like to have that with a barista. Who knows who I am and the, you know, the guy at the grocery store and meet some writers. I really want to be in a town and meet some writers and hang out with them. 

[00:08:97] Actually I’m going to reach out to one of the spa girls, if you listened to their podcast, it’s awesome. And she lives in Tauranga. So I’m going to reach out to her and maybe have a coffee. If she lets me, have a tea, so that’ll be nice. I think I’ve catch you up on everything else. That’s going on around here. I did start my classes on Tuesday and they’re going to be amazing. The people in them are just as always sublime and I’m doing a couple of new things with the classes going a little bit deeper into how to get a book done in 90 days, as I am writing the 90 day to done book, I’ve been thinking of new things. So they’re kind of my guinea pigs, in the best way they’re getting kind of the best of what I know. And that is really pretty stupendous and amazing that I was able to do that from a beach house at the far north of New Zealand where I am number 36 of the top 100 E. birders on the app. I’ve got to brag on that. I have identified 22 species of birds, me and my binoculars, so that’s not what I was expecting to do for our first month in the wilds of New Zealand, but it has been wonderful. 

[00:09:23] So with that update, let us, oh, well let me, actually thank a couple of new patrons, if you don’t mind, they were open and then they closed because the internet does kind of go up and down here, but here it is. Juliet Kelly. Thank you, Juliet and Amber Reed. Thank you. Thank you so much new patrons, new and current existing patrons and all of the patrons of the past. Thank you so much. Because of you, I get to spend the time writing these essays that are the essays of my heart, that I love, love, love to do, so thank you very, very much. All right. My friends, it doesn’t matter whether you wrote yesterday and it doesn’t matter whether you have written yet today. Can you find 10 or 15 minutes today to write some really terrible words. Words that let you down., and words that will not let you down in the future when you go back to them and you make them a little shiny, a little brighter. I know that you can do that. Please find me where I am online and tell me how you are doing with this request that you write, because your story is important. Only you can tell it and I want to read it. So, keep me posted my friends and enjoy this interview with Kristan Higgins. I know you will.

[00:10:39] 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!

[00:11:37] Rachael Herron: I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Kristan Higgins. Hello, Kristan! 

[00:11:43] Kristan Higgins: Hi Rachael! So good to see you again. 

[00:11:45] Rachael Herron: It’s a thrill to talk to you. I don’t think I’ve seen you in a while!

[00:11:49] Kristan Higgins: Years

[00:11:49] Rachael Herron: Well, we haven’t got a conference. I had you talk to one of my classes one time, and that was awesome, but I’m so glad to welcome you to the show. Let me give a little introduction for those who may not know you. New York Times bestselling author, Kristan Higgins has sold 4.5 million books worldwide and is published in more than two dozen languages around the world. Her two most recent novels were each selected as People magazine’s “Pick of the Week.” Kristan is also a co-host of the Crappy Friends podcast which discusses the often complex dynamics of female friendships, with our friend and fellow writer, Joss Dey. Kristan lives in Connecticut with her family and Pack up the Moon is her most recent novel. So that’s, you’ve got a lot going on. Plus, you’ve got the daughter getting married. We were just talking about off air. Oh, my goodness! Well, congratulations on a new book. I am in the middle of it and loving it, and it is such a tear jerker.

[00:12:46] Kristan Higgins: Yeah, i know

[00:11:48] Rachael Herron: It’s gotta be your tear jerkiest. Right?

[00:12:50] Kristan Higgins: It definitely is, and I say that with pride, you know, I love books that affect me so much that I cry. And I think there’s something really cathartic and healing, and it’s like a gift to be able to cry over a fake person, a fictional person, you know, because sometimes it’s harder to cry in real life, over real people because you have so much going on and you have to take care of things and details. And other people’s grief. And so when you’re reading a book and it’s sad and you have a good blubber, you know, there’s something great about that. And I mean, I hope you’re finding too that it’s not just a sad book, you know? It’s  

[00:13:39] Rachael Herron: Oh no, not at all. It’s a tear jerker but it’s moving.

[00:13:43] Kristan Higgins: Yeah. The premises is clear, you know, a young woman with a terminal illness writes 12 letters to her husband to kind of walk him through that first year of widowhood for him because she knows, you know, that she’s the best thing that ever happened to him. And that he’s not going to have an easy time of it. And that she’s his person. So she’s going to take care of him even after she’s gone, so I think it’s very romantic in that sense. And, you know, it’s a love story. It’s a tragic love story, but without being a plot spoil, it does have a happy ending.

[00:14:25] Rachael Herron: I’m feeling that I’m feeling that’s going to happen. I’m very confident in that. But also like it’s just, I think it’s a really good time for this book to come out. I think people have had a lot of feelings and a lot of us included, you know, I struggle with feeling feelings, and this is a way to do that. 

[00:14:50] Kristan Higgins: We all have had such a, the whole world has had such a rough 18 months plus, and we’ve all gone through this trauma and uncertainty. And I think, you know, for me, certainly, and I think for most people we’ve never really felt the possibility of our immortality, more realistically than we have in this past pandemic, you know, where I’m, you know, I was just doing another interview earlier and I said, you know, I’m Hungarian and we think about death all the time. We it’s our hobby, it’s our, you know, the song of my people is to plan a funeral, you know, and yet every time in the past year or so, year and a half, going to the supermarket might be the last thing that, you know, that keeps you out of the house, you know, that puts you into the hospital or, you know, and I would think that I would go out and say like, is this the day I get COVID I’ve got two masks and my hand sanitizer, and I’m doing all the distancing and, you know, being as careful as can be, but, so were a lot of people who caught it. So I do think that like, as a nation and as a, you know, as a world, we’ve all been in mourning, we’ve all been looking at the possibility of the death of our loved ones. You know, my daughter’s a nurse, she just became,

[00:16:18] Rachael Herron: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. And good for you for raising a woman like that

[Read more…] about Ep. 258: Kristan Higgins on How to Write Forward Without Looking Back

Ep. 257: Cassandra Lane on How to Parent Yourself as a Writer

Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s Conception series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir We Are Bridges was published in 2021 by Feminist Press. She is editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine and formerly served on the board of the AROHO Foundation.

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 # 257 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased with that you are here with me today as I talked to Cassandra Lane. She was absolutely smashing to talk to. And we really talk a lot about the process of writing and how to take care of yourself as a writer, even, shall we say, how to parent yourself as a writer, which I thought was a really interesting thing to talk about. So I know you will enjoy the interview and what’s going on around here? Well, we are still in lockdown in New Zealand in the Northland. But we just went from level four, which is the most extreme lockdown: you don’t go anywhere, you don’t do anything at all, except to the grocery store if you need to, to level three. Nothing changes. You still have to stay in your bubble. You still have to not go anywhere. We still can’t leave this Airbnb on the water. It’s real rough, piteous. The one thing that changes is that you can get takeout and I’m going to be able to go kayaking. Really? What else do we need? This morning it happened, we went to level three, up here. Auckland below us is still at level four. We need to drive through Auckland in order to leave this place. So we’re kind of here until Auckland goes off of level four, which is going to be about another week and a half, hopefully. Hopefully that will go down to level three and then we can move to a new apartment, which is more affordable. But in the meantime, we’re going to enjoy the crap out of this. But this morning, while my wife and I were working, I said, “Hey, you want to go get a coffee?” And we went and got the best coffee ever. She got a Cappuccino, I got a latte. We got it from a person, we went to a place, to buy a thing. It was amazing!

[00:02:11] It was so, so, so good. I’m still giddy on the fumes and the high of getting that coffee. It was wonderful. Unfortunately, I will admit, it threw me off my game, leaving the house during my writing time, getting so excited about the coffee. I have not written today. And I’ve been doing really, really well with those daily Pomodoros, getting my work done, and I haven’t done it yet. So, I’ve got a little bit of guilt and a little bit of angst around it. So, I will be getting that done after I upload this. I apologize for the days recently where it hasn’t gone out on a Friday, or it has come out on Saturday or even I think one came out on the Sunday. I can’t keep my day straight, even though I’m a day ahead of the United States. My brain is all confused and it just makes me feel like I have a lot more time to get you the show, which means I don’t do it. And also, the Wi-Fi speed here is okay, but it’s not great for uploading YouTube videos. So I’m behind in uploading a couple of the YouTube videos of the podcast in case you watch on that, I apologize for that. I keep meaning to do it when we go to bed so that it can be the only thing using the internet when we go to sleep, but I’m tired, and I have forgotten every night, for a week. So, I’m feeling pretty relaxed and my brain is showing that I really, really love being here. I love the walks that I’m taking through the rain and through the sun and just being surrounded by this much beauty is incredible. Also, it has cemented our belief that when we do eventually settle down, we want to settle down within walking distance of a cafe and/or a grocery store.

[00:04:01] For the last 15 years, before we moved here, we had to drive at least 20 minutes to get to somewhere to get anything. And you know, we’re back to that and that’s awesome. And we drive through the most gorgeous countryside you’ve ever seen in order to get coffee or to go to the grocery store, but I’m ready to just walk. We had those six beautiful days in Auckland where we walked everywhere and got everything and this was pre-lockdown. So no masks, everybody inside, it just felt normal for a while. I know that there’s a lot of talk about what’s going on in New Zealand with the lockdowns. Right now, the goal is elimination of coronavirus, which is what they have done a couple of times successfully before by a total lockdown, keeping it out of the country.

[00:04:52] There was an article in the New York Times this morning saying, “Can New Zealand really do it?”, because the Delta strain is so much more easily spread. I don’t know. I don’t think they’re going to keep us in lockdown forever if we can’t corale it. But, to be fair, we had one case. It, what was it about, a week and a half ago, and that’s one, maybe two weeks ago, when we locked down. We had one case in the community. It is now up to 700 cases. And I was like, oh my God, that’s so many. And all of those people have been, you know, quarantined. They’re all there, I think there’s 20 people in the hospital. No one has died. Only 26 people have died of COVID, total, since coronavirus started in New Zealand. And, in kind of a comparison last night, I was curious and I pulled up the states that are closest in size to New Zealand, New Zealand has 5 million people. Alabama and Minnesota both have about a million people. Alabama, yesterday, reported almost 5,000 cases in one day. We have 700 cases in the country, total. Of course, you know, that’s Alabama.

[00:06:00] So it’s a little bit different from Minnesota. They reported 1400 cases in one day. We’ve had 700 cases over the course of two weeks and all of those people are being tracked and monitored. Everyone in the country is being tracked and monitored and that might fly, that might not fly so well in the United States. We really have a group of people in New Zealand who are willing to turn on their Bluetooth, willing to use the COVID tracer app, wherever they go. And that is why I, I’m still hopeful that we can stamp out Delta here. If not, they’re rolling out the vaccines as fast as they can. About 25% of the population now is vaccinated. Everybody, almost everybody, wants to be vaccinated. Of course, there are some anti-vaxxers. There’s one guy protesting in Auckland a few days ago. Just one guy, they gave him a ticket. 

[00:06:57] They were the last developed nation to get the vaccine, New Zealand was, because they didn’t really have much need of it. Could they have done a better job at getting the vaccine in? Probably, I don’t know. I don’t profess to know much about New Zealand politics, although I am trying to learn. So people are very, very eager to get the vaccine so that Delta being out and in the society would be not acceptable because it’s not acceptable, but a little bit better and a little bit less scary for them. New Zealanders are scared of this as, I can’t even imagine, like when Delta came out, everyone I knew had the vaccine, so at least we knew that if we got it, we wouldn’t get it sick and go to the hospital and die. But, right now, the vast majority of new Zealanders don’t have the vaccine and they, we don’t need Delta raging through the community. But, anyway, that’s enough of that. I just find it really interesting and still so fascinating to watch the response here and how everybody just pulls together. It’s unreal. It really, really is. It’s wonderful to see. 

[00:08:06] I would like to quickly thank new patrons, Mary Poliath and Mary M. Barnett. Hello, Mary. Sarah McKenzie and Carol and Cecilia, what a pretty name. I apologize if I mispronounce any of those, I just got a visual migraine while we’ve been sitting here. So while I’m looking at the camera, I can’t really see it. It just looks like lightning. Visual migraines don’t always go along with pain migraines in my life. So I’m hoping I don’t get one of those cause I don’t feel migraine-y at all. And oh, speaking of Patreon, I will say that I am a proud and happy member of Becca Syme’s Patreon. And you know how I feel about Becca Syme. If you have not heard my interview with Becca Syme, S-Y-M-E go back, find that, listen to it. I love her. And, I will say that the, one of the reasons I didn’t write this morning is that I’m taking her Facebook ads for intuitives, of course. Which is basically, make an ad somewhere and then track it intuitively, not looking at a hundred different numbers and cost per click and all of those other things. Here’s how you look at it intuitively. And I’m loving it. I actually created a Facebook ad this morning and it was fun to do. So I am thinking about that and if you are looking for a person to become a patron of, number one, you can look at me at $5 and up. I’m your mini coach. You know that at $1 and up I’m eternally grateful. That’s Rachaelherron.com/ no, it’s not. It’s at patreon.com/Rachael. But after that, really consider patronizing Becca Syme. You can just find her by searching Patreon – Becca Syme. She’s definitely the person I love being a patron of most. She provides so much value to her patrons. I just wanted to give a non-sponsored, non-affiliated plug for that. I just love everything she does. So, you might want to check her out. 

[00:10:14] In the meantime, let us just get into the interview with Cassandra. I know you’re going to enjoy it. I hope you are getting some writing done, my friends, visual migraine, or not. Actually, you know what, if you have a visual migraine, just go lie on the floor till it passes because it will. Oh, I am feeling scattered today and I will just tell you my favorite visual migraine story in 30 seconds or less. The very first time I ever got a visual migraine, I was about 25 and I had just curled my eyelashes for the first time. It was a total coincidence, but I thought I had made myself blind by curling my eyelashes and it was a very scary morning. Now I scrub my eyelashes every day because that’s one of the things I like to do and I don’t normally get visual migraines. Okay. That is all. I’m silly today. It’s the coffee. All right, my friends, happy writing to you. 

[00:11:06] 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. 

[00:11:23] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Cassandra Lane. Hello, Cassandra!

[00:11:29] Cassandra Lane: Hi, Rachael, how are you? 

[00:11:31] Rachael Herron: I’m so glad to talk to you, I’m so excited. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA, Louisiana. Louisiana?

[00:11:44] Cassandra Lane: No, at Los Angeles. 

[00:11:45] Rachael Herron: Oh, it’s actually LA, okay. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’ Conception series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir, We Are Bridges was published in 2021 by Feminist Press. She is editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine and formerly served on the board of the AROHO Foundation. What’s the AROHO Foundation?

 [00:12:07] Cassandra Lane: It’s A Room of Her Own.

 [00:12:08] Rachael Herron: Oh, I did not know that. Well, let’s start off by saying I’m a memoir junkie. 

[00:12:18] Cassandra Lane: Oh, yeah. 

[00:12:19] Rachael Herron: Absolutely. It’s just probably my favorite genre to read and to write, and We Are Bridges was just absolutely stunning. 

[00:12:27] Cassandra Lane: Thank you so much.

[00:12:28] Rachael Herron: It was haunting, it was traumatic, it was about trauma, generational trauma. And you just did such an incredible job, and I felt honored to walk with you through that and kind of see things through your eyes. So thank you so much for writing it. At the end of the show, I want you to tell people what it is and what it is about.

[00:12:52] Cassandra Lane: Okay.

[00:12:53] Rachael Herron: But, as we get started, as we normally do, let’s talk about process because you sound very busy. How do you write, how do you get it done? Where does it live inside your busy life?

 [00:13:10] Cassandra Lane: Oh my God. Well, thank you so much first for your lovely words about the book.

[00:13:14] Rachael Herron: I loved it.

[00:13:15] Cassandra Lane: That’s taken me forever to write. 

[00:13:16] Rachael Herron: Yeah. 

[00:13:17] Cassandra Lane: When I saw your, I think it’s a class, or a book that you wrote about writing in 45 days, what is it, 48 hours? 

[00:13:23] Rachael Herron:  45 days and yeah, no, 45 hours, and it is the crappiest first draft and mostly that’s over the course of many weeks.

[00:13:30] Cassandra Lane: Okay. But I was like, oh my gosh, I need this book. So for me, yes, it’s been a very long process. I mean, I started the first seeds of this in maybe 2002. So, almost 20 years. 

[00:13:44] Rachael Herron: Yeah.

[00:13:45] Cassandra Lane: I’ve always pretty much worked full time, very demanding jobs. So, just getting a little bit in, I get up really early for 4:30 in the morning.

[00:13:56] Rachael Herron: Ah, yes, you are the really early bird. 

[00:13:58] Cassandra Lane: Yeah. Yeah. And I have to, before the craziness of work, and once I became a mom, you know, parenting begins. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 257: Cassandra Lane on How to Parent Yourself as a Writer

Ep. 256: How To Create Plot Twists

In this bonus miniepisode, Rachael talks about how to create plot twists for a good mystery, and what should I do if I’m about to miss a deadline? 

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 #256 of “How do you Write?” This is a bonus mini episode. This is well, it’s for everybody and that’s the cool thing about these bonus mini episodes. But if you would like to send me questions, if you would like me to be your coach, you can send me any question you want about anything. If it’s dirty, I’m not going to answer it. But other than that, there’s nothing off limits. Preferably about writing, but whatever semi questions, that’s at the $5 a month and up level over at patreon.com/Rachael and you can become part of that. And I really, it really means a lot. Plus, you get all the essays that I write and sometimes I record them in there just for patrons. So you can go look at that, but in the meantime, let us jump into the two questions that we have here. 

[00:01:06] All right. First this is from Kate, and Kate says, “Hi, Rachael! I love your podcast. And so excited to be a new patron and able to get your advice. Thank you, Kate. I am working on my first manuscript, a middle grade kid, detective story. Side note, that sounds awesome. I’m having trouble with plotting out the story because I am simultaneously learning to craft a compelling story and trying to figure out how to write a mystery with clues and red herrings and twists and turns. There’s lots of resources out there for plotting story structure, and I’m using those as a guide, but I need advice on how to write an interesting mystery and layer in the clues and red herrings. I have a basic idea of who done it, but the story doesn’t feel very mysterious. It all seems really obvious who the bad guy is. I have had trouble finishing drafts. I’ve gotten halfway through five drafts now and back to outlining again because my previous mystery elements just weren’t working. And my biggest goal now is to actually finish a draft. I know some clues can be layered in later, but big tweak, twists seem like I need to know before I start writing because they affect story structure so much. Any advice you have on writing mysteries? Any resources you’d like to recommend to learn more? So I have advice and I have a strange resource for you. 

[00:02:24] First of all, congratulations on working on this. That sounds super exciting and so fun. I love that you’re writing it. Most of all, congratulations on determining that you will finish this. That is the number one thing that you have to do in a mystery or a thriller or any kind of suspense novel in order to figure out how to hide the stuff that you want to hide. And I know that you’re expecting me to say this, everyone listening to this who has ever heard me speak on any topic at all is expecting me to say this, but it all can be finished in revision. And more than that, it has to be finished and fixed in revision, inside revision, you are not going to get the great ideas about how to hide twists that you haven’t even thought of yet until you write the whole book. The answers to those questions will come to you as you are writing the crappy first draft. And the crappy first draft is the one that telegraphs to the entire world who the killer or the bad guy is for this. I’m not sure if you have a killer and, why I hope you do. That’d be fun. Ignore that. You can have one or not have one, but the person who did it, who did the bad thing, your first draft will have it pointed out like they’re lit up in neon. That is completely normal. I think I have told this story recently and I can’t remember where I told it, so excuse me, if I just told it on the podcast last week, but – I think it was in an interview. So you haven’t heard it yet. 

[00:04:04] For Hush Little Baby, the thriller that just came out. I wrote a full synopsis, a full treatment of everything that happened in it. And my agent went over it with me. My editor went over it with me, everyone approved, we all signed off on it. This was a great story. And it was going to be a complete mystery as to who the person was, who was the bad guy in this book. I wrote it, I wrote the first draft and it was the worst thing ever. And I wrote it to the synopsis that had been approved. And none of us, the three of us who are all professionals in the industry had not seen in the synopsis that what I was writing was an aero to the person who was the bad guy. It didn’t have the twists that I came up with after I wrote the first draft and knew what I was wrestling with. The final version had those twists, the final version had that person so well hid that I haven’t talked to anybody who figured it out. Early or easily, or at all when reading that book. But it took writing a terrible, terrible first draft that professionals had signed off on as a good idea. It was not a good idea.

[00:05:20] It was a bad idea. It was a bad draft. It was a terrible draft. I had to take it completely apart, put it back together again with a new twist, new surprises. I actually changed the person who it was after the book was written and believe it or not, I changed everything. And I had to, because I wrote, I wrote it badly. Our brains are not smart enough to come up with big twists, big surprises when we’re just sitting at our desk and plotting, we have to be writing the book. We have to be really, learning from the book that we want to write in order to come up with that kind of brilliant, surprising, you think of it in the shower after you spent an hour working on it that day. You have to write the book first. So getting to the end of this crappy first draft, that’s all you need to do and then start revising. And then you will be figuring out what to do, but as to resources, here’s the best resource possible. You can read all the books you want. There’s a ton of ’em out there. Those have never helped me. What has helped me with writing? Suspense fiction has been plot lunches with other writers. And what I mean by that, is it doesn’t have to be a lunch. It doesn’t have to- you don’t have to be in person. You can do this over zoom, but everybody who’s listening to this podcast needs a community of writers around them, that you know, personally and who know what you’re working on. Please don’t critique your work with them ever. You know how I feel about that first drafts and even second drafts are too or just too fragile to share with people.

[Read more…] about Ep. 256: How To Create Plot Twists

Ep. 255: Lisa Scottoline on How To Demystify Writing

Lisa Scottoline is the #1 bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of thirty-three novels. She has over thirty million copies of her books in print in the United States and has been published in thirty-five countries. Scottoline also writes a weekly column with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which has been adapted into a series of memoirs. She has served as President of the Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, “Justice in Fiction,” at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She lives in the Philadelphia area. Eternal is her most recent novel. Set in Rome, it asserts that what war destroys, only love can heal.

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 #255 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled that you are here with me today, I really, really am. I always am, but especially today, because I am talking to Lisa Scottoline. And let me tell you, I worship this woman, I did before we spoke. And then it was really hard to get our schedules to align, when her publicist reached out to me and, but I was determined. So I turned into that annoying pest, who was like, can we try again? Can we try again? It took months to get this interview and it has been months since I recorded it, since we’ve been moving and everything. But I am as excited about it as the day we spoke, she has, it’s such a dynamism and such an incredible way of looking at writing and how to satisfy the market that you create for your writing. And she kind of demystifies some aspects of writing, and I literally could have talked to her all day. So you are going to love that. 

[00:01:21] What’s been going on around here? Still in New Zealand, still in the same house, outside the town of Russell, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Like I said last week, we are on this little inlet in the bay of islands. There are four houses on the inlet and only one of them has a person living in it. Luckily, he’s next door and he also has a puppy. So we get to see a puppy sometimes. We get to play with a puppy and the puppy is darling. It’s a little border Collie-Springer-Spaniel mix named Fur. But otherwise, there’s no one around, we don’t really talk to Fur’s owner either, we just kind of wave at him. The only really object we’ve been talking to that is not each other is Fur. I have found, in captivity, that I really, really love long walks. And this is something I knew about myself, but where we lived in Oakland before for 15 years, there was no place to walk. I could walk, I could go down this one street and then up another street, and then I could kind of walk in circles around these blocks, but there were just a lot of places in my neighborhood that were not at all conducive to safe walking and I couldn’t. And I just can’t stand the idea of driving somewhere to go walk. And right now, legally in New Zealand, you can’t drive somewhere to go walk.  But here, I can just leave the house. We have this bush walk, if you’re looking at the YouTube video, there’s these stairs, you can see behind me. It goes straight up through the bush, just as big hill that we’re on the other side of, up to the main road. And then I just walk out on the main road. Most days that I walk, I don’t even see another car, let alone a person. I did see a person once and they had a dog named Marshmallow. Again, I don’t know the person’s name, don’t care, but the dog’s name was Marshmallow and she was adorable. And I’ve been taking these long walks in the middle of my workday. 

[00:03:14] I think I mentioned last week that I have this new improved schedule that allows me to take this long walk and a long lunch and 30 minutes to read in the middle of the day. And it’s just been feeling pretty wonderful, which is good because Auckland and North of Auckland, which is where we are, we’re in the Northland, has been put on, has, is going to remain on level four lockdown, the highest lockdown there is for at least the next two weeks. South of Auckland, they’re hoping to go to level three, which is the point at which restaurants can open and you can get takeout. So I’m very happy for the rest of New Zealand starting on Tuesday, that there’ll be able to get takeout again. That’s probably the thing I missed the most on lockdown. I can’t remember if I mentioned this last week, but it’s really interesting. We’re not spending any money except on rent and groceries, on our Airbnb rent and groceries. We cannot order anything online because we don’t have an address here. This house doesn’t have an address. We cannot go to restaurants, they’re all closed. We have no other bills, which is an amazing feeling. We have our cell phone bill and that is it. We paid cash for the car. We were paying rent to the Airbnb and we have our cell phone bill. And that’s pretty, it was really low because it’s cheap here and that’s it. That’s all we’re paying for. 

[00:04:36] So that’s been kind of nice and, and yeah, and we’re stuck legally. We cannot leave this house for at least another couple of weeks. And I have to say, that while my heart is broken, that New Zealand is struggling with this, and it is very expensive of the country. I read somewhere that it costs like a billion dollars a day to shut down, I can’t quite believe that. And I did see it on Twitter and it was not from, it was just from a person saying that to me, I have not researched that number, but it does cost New Zealand so much money to shut down like this, to lockdown like this at such a severe level. But that is how they got rid of COVID the first time they had it, and that’s why we’re doing it now. And the cool thing about it is that when they got rid of COVID the first time, and then had a more than a year of not having COVID, their economy rebounded completely to the place it was before. They didn’t have any kind of recession. They didn’t have any job loss over the long-term. It all came back. So, that’s hopefully what this nation is doing right now. And I’m really proud of it and I’m happy to be part of it. And there’s a tiny part of me that says, Oh, my gosh, Rachael, you’re so, no, there’s a huge part of me that says, oh my gosh, Rachael, you’re so lucky. And there’s a tiny part of me that says, should you be feeling this much joy and being able to walk by the ocean every day for weeks? And that tiny voice I would like to say, yes, it is okay that I feel joy about that. That is marvelous. How lucky are we to be in this position, in this amazing place? So, just feeling a lot of gratitude as usual. 

[00:06:17] Also, I’ve been getting my work done, people. I’m 18,000 words into the 90 Days to Done book. And it’s so fun to write, sometimes nonfiction, especially writing about craft, writing about writing. It doesn’t feel like writing to me. It just feels like play. Fiction is often hard for me. Memoir is often hard for me. Writing is just hard, period. It’s hard work. But writing about craft? So it’s just so yummy. I’m loving that. Really quickly, quick thanks to new patrons, Louisa Brooke Holland. I have Hollins and my family and my New Zealand family actually. So thank you, Louisa and Nene Cohen. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining over at Patreon and becoming a supporter of me and of the show. It means I get to write those essays about, right now, I’m writing about moving to New Zealand and there’s a new essay going to come out probably within a week or so on entering New Zealand for a week and then exiting New Zealand into the lockdown because it really does feel like we’re staying at a beach house in Mendocino. We are not interacting with new Zealanders except once a week, when one of us goes to get groceries at the grocery store. Otherwise, we could be anywhere. So did we move? I saw California coil on my walk the other day. That was like, did we move? Did we actually do it? Yes, we did. We also, I’ve seen so many birds, the Eastern Rosella, it looks like this little tiny parrot wearing a leopard print cape. Even if you’re not into birds, look up the Eastern Rosella, R-O-S-E-L-L-A, because it is the cutest thing!

[00:08:05] Okay, I’m not going to burn out on you. We’re going to talk about writing and we’re going to talk about it with Lisa Scottoline, and you are going to love her as much as I do. Please enjoy this interview and may it inspire perhaps a 15-minute or so burst of writing on your part. If you’re getting none done, if you’re getting a little done an extra 15 minutes, an extra 30 minutes, those little minutes, add up. I’m 18,000 words in. I started this book a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve just been doing three or four, 25-minute Pomodoros a day, less than two hours of writing. That’s what can happen when we reliably sit down and do our work. So, it’s not good work. It’s not great work. It’s actually bad work. It’s going to require lot of revision, but it’s words on a page and that’s our only goal. So let’s listen to Lisa talk about that and happy writing, my friends. 

[00:08:58] 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!

[00:09:57] Rachael Herron: Well, I could not be more thrilled to welcome to the show today, Lisa Scottoline. Hi, Lisa!

[00:10:02] Lisa Scottoline: Hello, thank you for having me. I’m so thrilled. 

[00:10:05] Rachael Herron: I have been looking forward to this for literally months. 

[00:10:09] Lisa Scottoline: Well, I’m a fan of yours as I just told you. So this is just super and I’d love to, I really want to encourage people to write. So this is great to be talking in this way and hopefully we’ll be encouraging some people and get some new voices out there!

[00:10:21] Rachael Herron: Absolutely! Oh, you’re exactly the perfect person to be on the show.

[00:10:25] Lisa Scottoline: I am the perfect person! I keep telling everybody that. 

[00:10:30] Rachael Herron: Let me give an introduction for this perfect person because she is.

[00:10:33] Lisa Scottoline: Go ahead.

[00:10:34] Rachael Herron: Lisa Scottoline is the #1 bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of thirty-three novels. She has over thirty million copies of her books in print in the United States and has been published in thirty-five countries. Scottoline also writes a weekly column with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which has been adapted into a series of memoirs. She has served as President of the Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, “Justice in Fiction,” at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. And she lives in the Philadelphia area. Eternal is her most recent novel. Set in Rome, it asserts that what war destroys, only love can heal. And I have got to say, so. I have a few things to say. And then I’m just going to ask you so many questions.

[00:11:19] Lisa Scottoline: Go right ahead. Ask me anything. Poke away.

 [00:11:22] Rachael Herron: Number one. Again, thank you for that blurb that you gave for Hush Little Baby. It-

[00:11:28] Lisa Scottoline: It’s terrific book and you deserve it. 

[00:11:30] Rachael Herron: Thank you. Thank you. I’ll just say that. Thank you. Number two, Eternal. Holy cow! So Rome is one of my favorite cities in the world. Venice is my favourite city, but Rome, 

[00:11:41] Lisa Scottoline: Venice is super cool. Agree, agree.

[00:11:43] Rachael Herron: You just can’t, you just can’t not love.

[00:11:44] Lisa Scottoline: I know, I know, but kind of Leon has Venice, so I gotta get. 

[00:11:47] Rachael Herron: She sure does love Venice. But, Rome is one of those places that my mother actually taught me to fall in love with. I, we were there and I always kind of thought of Rome as a little bit dirty, a little rough around the edges. And we saw it that way, but in the most incredible way that on every level of every surface in Rome, there is history built in and you captured that so incredibly well.

[00:12:12] Lisa Scottoline: Thank you, thank you. Well, I really wanted to, and Rome is dirty on every surface. I love it! You got to love the grit, man. You can’t walk there in sandals because like you’re wearing Roman sandals and then you filth all over your toes, but I kinda love it. It’s, everything about it is so real deal. And I really wanted to capture that as a backdrop in Eternal, as you know, it’s a love story against the Italian fascism. So, but that’s about the book, but yes. 

[00:12:38] Rachael Herron: So how did you get to know Rome so well? Is it a place that you’ve lived for a long time and go back and forth through? Or did you?

[00:12:45] Lisa Scottoline: It was more than I knew about. I love it. I’m Italian-American. I’ve been there a couple of times. And when I found that about the sort of true life event that I felt really, 

[00:12:53] Rachael Herron: I don’t know anything about 

[00:12:55] Lisa Scottoline: I didn’t know anything about it either! And when I learned that I was like, this is like a story that needs to be told. And then I, for 30 years, it was eating me up. And, the Italian Holocaust I learned about in college. And then I said, I gotta write about this someday. So it was really more that the story needed to be told and that occurred in Rome which, you know, besides being the seed of Roman Catholicism is also home to the oldest, continuously existing Jewish community in Western civilization. I was like, okay, girl, you’re going to try to write historical fiction now. Go!

[Read more…] about Ep. 255: Lisa Scottoline on How To Demystify Writing

Ep. 254: Laura Hankin on How to Use Your Favorite Writing to Inspire Your Own

Laura Hankin is the author of Happy & You Know It. She has written for publications like McSweeney’s and HuffPost, while her musical comedy has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Funny or Die. She splits her time between NYC, where she has performed off-Broadway and acted onscreen, and Washington D.C., where she has sung to far too many babies. A Special Place for Women is her most recent release. 

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 #254 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad you are here with me today, as we talk to Laura Hankin and kind of repurposing and looking at your own favorite writing in order to inspire your own. And even though it’s been a minute since I talked to her, these interviews are kind of stacked behind me. It was so enjoyable to talk to her. And I know that you’re going to enjoy this interview. So where am I, if you’re looking at me on the YouTube, I am holding the microphone because I cannot make my microphone stand work at this particular desk or I am. So I look like I’m about to break into song, which I promise you I will not, but I am excited to be able to use good audio again. Hopefully, this is sounding better than some of the past ones have sounded when I’ve been in some strange places, still in a strange place in a very strange place, indeed. I am in a Russell, New Zealand. I am not in a bathroom. I’m not locked in a cabinet somewhere. I’m in a gorgeous house, a big house. That’s on the water of the bay of islands. Well, let me tell you a little bit about it. 

[00:01:32] So this place is way out of our budget, way, way, way out of our budget. But the owners of this house also had a little apartment in the town of Russell and it looked gorgeous. It was within our price range. It had a hot tub, but when I asked the owner, if it had good wifi, because both my wife and I need good wifi, especially my wife, to do our work. He said, no, actually it doesn’t. And we haven’t gotten fiber there yet, but I do have a house that’s on the beach and nobody’s in it because there are no tourists who are allowed to enter New Zealand for the last year and a half. So no one’s in it. Why don’t you have it for the same price? So we have this gorgeous house on the water. It has no address. He just told us where to enter the beach, where to drive down onto the beach and turn left. There are five houses on this little Cove, where the fourth house or the one with the green roof. And you can only get to it when it is low enough tide to drive to otherwise, you can walk to it from the car park, which is not far away. And we tend to leave the car in the car park because who knows when we might want to use the car. However, what I will say is really using the car way less than we thought we would. We arrived last week. We had a couple of delicate days of walking the coast and we went and did some tours in Russell. We went to the old printery where the first books in New Zealand were ever printed. And we went to the white tangy treaty grounds. We did some touristy stuff, which feels weird again when you’re the only tourist around and then on Tuesday, right after I’d gone to the doctor to ascertain that, yes, I had broken two bones in my foot a month ago, right before we left that I had been completely ignoring.

[00:03:21] And which apparently I only need to continue ignoring, which I was hoping was true. Right after I went to the doctor, we were alerted to the first case of COVID in the country, in the community for a very long time. New Zealand shutdown in 2020 for about eight weeks. And it’s been open since then. They shut it down. They didn’t let people move around. And they took care of it. So this community case was a very big deal and they shut the country down that day. They locked it down. We were at lockdown level four, and for people who have not been at levels like America, level four, mean to don’t do crap. You do not do crap. Every business has shut down except for essential services like supermarkets, gas stations and doctors, hospitals, testing sites, those kinds of places. It’s not like in the United States when we’re talking about essential workers, it seems like that there were a lot of essential workers here, there are fewer. It’s not like there are any restaurants that are open. There’s no takeout food. There’s no cafes. There’s no nothing. There’s just the grocery store, just the gas station. And you are not allowed to move. You are not allowed to drive. You’re not allowed to walk out to someplace unless you are going to the grocery store or to the doctor. Other than that, you can walk in your area, safely distance from others. But you must stay in your bubble. You must not drive anywhere. You can’t cross regions. You can’t, you’re really locked down. They’re serious about eradicating this. And indeed, this was Tuesday and we got the first case and by Friday, it was a Delta case. It came in from New South Wales, Australia, by Friday. We have 32 cases now in the country. So it’s kind of a panic crisis moment. We’re expecting more, a hundred or 200 cases to show up because, some of the vector sites were one was a church. One was a bar. Most of the people who have it are in their twenties and thirties, and they were all hanging out and going out late and doing stuff, which is why they got around so much.

[00:05:31] So we are locked down. We are unable to move. We are unable to go to our next Airbnb place. And no one is available, no one is able to come to this Airbnb place. So the host just said as he has to say, but he was awesome. Said stay as long as you like. So we are here for the duration of the lockdown, at least while we’re on level four and maybe when we’re in level three, I’ve done a bunch of reading about driving, being able to drive during level three. And I’m not quite sure of the things. This is a little bit of a splurge for us still. A little bit higher than we wanted to pay, even though it’s not at its actual rate. So I would like to move at some point just to save a little money, but in the meantime, the house, all the windows, just look out on the water, this particular bedroom that I’m recording in is the only room I’ve been in without a view. When I’m in the bathroom, I’m looking at the empty moored sail boats on the water. We’re watching birds. There’s nothing else to watch. There’s nobody who comes on our beach. There’s a guy who lives next door and he has a little border Collie slash Springer spaniel puppy. So we get to watch him walk and that’s about it. We’ve, I’ve seen one woman walking on the beach. I think she lives further down the road and that’s it. We are alone here and we can’t go anywhere. So it’s been honestly a delic. It delic, I wish that this was not happening. This is a terrible thing that is happening, but where we got stuck is heaven and I am so freaking grateful that we get to do this. So this is the end of a workweek as I’m recording this, I forgot to release this yesterday because time zones and days have me all messed up. So I apologize for that. But that means that at the end of today, it’s our weekend and we can’t go be touristy. We can’t drive around and look at things.

[00:07:30] We are not even supposed to kayak. We have kayaks here and the water’s really still, but you’re not supposed to boat or hike or do anything that may bring emergency services to you that may, that you may need emergency services to get out of. So even though I have been kayaking here before the lockdown, I don’t think I’m going to do it. Cause I feel morally torn about that. I definitely, who plans on needing emergency services. That’s the thing. If I go out on the water, I’m not planning on needing emergency services. I’ve kayaked a million times, but yeah, so we’re walking, we’re walking around the bay and looking at the things that the tide washes up and throwing clams that are tightly closed back into the water. The shores are just covered with clams and birds who eat the clams. And I dunno, maybe you can hear my voice that I’m just tickled and delighted and happy to be in such a safe and gorgeous location. I’m trying to pretend while we’re here, that we live here, that this is my house and I’m doing a really good job of it.

[00:08:38] So, what else has been going on? I had been writing every day, I came up with a new way, you know, I love a new way to me, of keeping track of if I’m getting stuff done, because with all the upset and turmoil and moving and stuff that we’ve been doing, it’s been easy for me to let days go without getting things done that I really need to do, like connecting with the people that I love, like meditation, like getting my deep work done, like getting work done on my secondary project. So I made myself a little chart. And I have all these boxes I can fill in during the day and I get a hundred points per box. And so I put this in my email that I sent out yesterday. So if you’re not on my email list, you want to be on that. You can go to RachaelHerron.com/Write and then I can send you the example of what this looks like, but I put some interesting things on there on my list of things that I want to do, that I get a hundred points for. I get a hundred points if I spend 30 minutes a day reading a book for pleasure during my work day. And by knowing that I can so easily get a hundred points, I have been doing it. I have been leaving work to go read on the couch, even though to me, it feels like you’re not getting enough done. You’re not checking off the to-do list. That is really important for me to do, I get a hundred points if I stopped working by 5:00 PM. Guess what has been making me close my computer at 4:59? I wanted those hundred points. So I stopped working. I don’t know. It’s been really awesome. So I’ve been getting a ton done and also relaxing cause there’s really nothing else to do.

[00:10:11] So that is what has been going on around here. Kind of a lot of things and also nothing. So, I just wanted to give a quick “Thank you” to new patrons, Nikki Woolfolk. Hello, Nik! Marie and Claire both edited their pledge up. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. It always makes me feel like a million dollars when you do that. So thank you to Claire Cutler and Marie. And a bumper crop of Jennifer’s came in this morning, Jennifer Flanker and Jennifer Zeitler. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope that you enjoy the essays that I’m writing right now about this big move and this big change. And yes, there will be one on lockdown and how different it feels to be here under a government that really, really cares about its residents, and does the right thing to protect them and to get business back on track. New Zealand lost a ton of money. There’s a technical financial way to do that. They went into great financial distress when they shut down for eight weeks, this last time. And they gained up all of it. All of the money back. On the very first day of this new lockdown, they already had the business forms in place for companies who could apply to pay their employees. The very first day, everything is in place here and it, it made me cry the first day when just Cindy, the prime minister, went on the news. She goes on the news every day. Every single day at 1:00 PM and talks to the nation and takes all the questions. And if she doesn’t have an answer, she comes back the next day with the answer. If she didn’t have it the day before she goes on there with her health minister and they just talk every day to the nation, it made me cry to see this happened with so much concern and so much care and people doing this for the right reasons, shutting down for the right reasons in order to save lives. 

[00:12:07] And it just makes me feel like I did the right thing by moving here. And I’m so happy and privileged, and I feel so patriotic to my country of New Zealand when something like this happens when I listened to her. So that’s been awesome. That’s been truly awesome. So let us jump into the interview now. I know that you’re going to enjoy this one. And in the meantime, I hope that you are getting even a little bit of writing done. A little bit every day adds up. And interestingly, if you do 10 minutes a day, and 15 minutes tomorrow, the next day you’re probably want to spend 20 minutes on it. It’s a, it’s pretty awesome how it grows. So do that, come back, find me online, tell me what you’re up to. I just glanced back at the video. If you never watched me on YouTube, don’t worry about it. But if you are watching on YouTube, the light in here is very strange. So anyway, happy writing to you all, I’m so glad to be in contact with you and to be part of your writing community, it means so much to me that you let me in to your ears and you let me talk to you and you let me talk to you about writing and about life and about how all of this feeds and informs our writing. So keep it up. Happy writing. We’ll talk soon. 

[00:13:23] 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. 

[00:13:41] Rachael Herron: All right. Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show today, Laura Hankin. Hello, Laura!

[00:13:45] Laura Hankin:  Hi! Thank you for having me. 

[00:13:47] Rachael Herron: I’m thrilled to have you, let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Laura Hankin is the author of Happy & You Know It, and she has written for publications like McSweeney’s and HuffPost, while her musical comedy has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post and Funny or Die. She splits her time between New York City, where she has performed off-Broadway and acted onscreen, and Washington D.C., where she has sung to far too many babies. A Special Place for Women is her most recent release. And I have just got to tell you how much I enjoyed your book. I had a recent complaint from somebody who’s like, Rachael, we never believe you because you always enjoy people’s books. But the thing is I don’t interview people whose books I don’t love. But that’s how it goes. And yours was just such a treat. And I saw somewhere, I can’t remember where I saw it. But it was like, maybe you said it somewhere now, what I’m saying? Like it was kind of almost, it touches on like a mashup of secret history meets practical magic, which I couldn’t let go of like two of my favorite books of all time. And you’re so funny and it’s so, but yet I’m settling in spooky and all of those things. So I just can’t recommend A Special Place for Women more. And I would love to talk to you about the writing of it and when, so this is show for writers about process. How do you write on a daily basis?

[00:15:17] Laura Hankin: Okay, well, there’s, you know, my ideal writing in a day and there’s like, what actually happened.

[00:15:24] Rachael Herron: I would love to hear about both. Yeah. Great. 

[00:15:28] Laura Hankin: So yeah, on a good writing day, I wake up in the morning, I like don’t look at my phone too much. I go for a nice long walk with a thermos of coffee. I leave my phone at home for it and so all I do is just like think my thoughts and get a little bored, and then I come, yeah. I mean, I know it’s like a luxury to also have the time and space to do that, but then I come back and I try to turn off my internet and write for the rest of the morning with a few wi-fi breaks and I aim to get out about a thousand words a day that way. And recently I’ve been trying to do it like Monday through Friday and then do whatever other stuff I have to do in the afternoon. And then actually let myself have weekends because, you know, as a writer, it can be very easy to be like, I need to write all the time, otherwise, what am I doing? 

[00:16:18] Rachael Herron: Yeah. I kind of binged between like writing none of the time and then writing all the time to deadline. So, and thousand words a day, five days a week is just sounds perfect. So what is the actual writing look like? 

[00:16:31] Laura Hankin: If I’m blocked for whatever reason or if there’s something else going on in my life, that’s taking a lot of my focus, sometimes it’s more like 200 words in a day and they’re really just kind of outlining or like free writing. And then occasionally the moments that I love the most are when I get like go away for a few days when I am able to make my schedule work in this way, where I can get like a cheap, cheap Airbnb or stay at a friend’s or something like that. And just know that for two or three days, my job is to write as much as I possibly can. And that’s when I like knock-out, you know, 7,000 words and a few days, and be like, I am a writing god!

[00:17:20] Rachael Herron: Have you had the chance to get away during the pandemic? Have you been able to sneak away a few times or? 

[00:17:25] Laura Hankin: I have, I found it a couple of really remote Airbnbs and been able to just like go to the country and not really see anybody and do that and I will say, you know, it’s interesting because I have written as my full-time job, like that’s what I’m doing now. And I feel very, very lucky to have that. And then I’ve also written while working a bunch of day jobs and had to like fit it all in there and it’s a lot tougher that way. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 254: Laura Hankin on How to Use Your Favorite Writing to Inspire Your Own