Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent studying in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics & Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.
How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.
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.
Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode 173 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron and I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today.
Today we are talking to the awesome Chanel Cleeton and she was wonderful. I loved her book Next Year in Havana, which you might’ve read. It’s pretty big book and I really enjoyed how she talked about planning her life, but maybe not her writing. So I know that you are going to enjoy listening to that. This will be a very short intro because, I have so much to do. I’m a little bit behind in everything and the news is big. The news is bad. The news is scary. So I want to remind you to get your writing done. Writing is a very true and real place where we can lose ourselves and kind of walk away from what the world is shouting. I urge you to put down the phone, stop reading the headlines. Take some really deep breaths, maybe do a little bit of meditation sink into that book that you have been putting off reading. That is what I’m doing right now, and it’s been marvelous and honor yourself as a writer. Maybe read one of those writing books that you have up there on the shelf.
As we are practicing social distancing, yeah, that’s a great time to be purchasing. Reading and telling other people about books. So we are going to continue to do that on this show. I’m going to tell you about a book right now that you might not know is out there because I’m very bad at self-promotion. It is called Letters to A New Author, and basically it’s a compilation of a lot of my emails that I have sent encouraging writers, and right now you can get a free preview of it just to see what it’s like I think it’s probably the first 30 pages or so of those letters, and it’s a great thing to do. To read if you are social distancing, which for me is hard to pronounce, social distancing, you can get a- it free, by going to www.rachaelherron.com/letters, totally free. Or you can just go to any of your favorite E-book tailors and look for Rachael Herron letters to a new author. And I hope you enjoy that.
All else as well around here, I’m working at home, which makes it very hard to write my words. I’m just such a terrible first draft writer at home and I just have to suck it up and do it. Just like you do, just like writers have to do. It’s part of our job to get it done when it’s hard. So I’m experimenting with different places in the house for me to try writing. My next spot is going to be the corner of the kitchen table. I mean the dining room table, which I’ve never sat at before. So that can also be really helpful to just change perspective a little bit. I am also, oh, I’m teaching a class at Berkeley this weekend. It is now switched to zoom, so I must kind of change my teaching outline, which I need to do right after this. I’m very much looking forward to teaching that one though. It’s one of my favorites on preparing to publish. What do you need to know about traditional publishing versus a- indie slash self-publishing, and how do you decide which way to go? So I’m going to be working on that, and I hope that you are getting some of your own writing done and I hope that you are finding some peace. Somewhere from all of the noise. It’s important. Take care of you. That is what I’m going to urge you to do right now, today and tomorrow and the next day. Take care of yourself so that we can take care of everyone else. It’s really important. So I send love and hope and fun and get some writing done, and then find me wherever I am on the internet and tell me how it went, okay? I’ll talk to you soon, my friend.
Hey, how’s your writing going? Do you swing from word to word like the sentence monkey you are in the enchanted book jungle? or is writing a slog? Maybe you’re not even writing. Let me suggest this: The stronger your resistance is to doing something, the more important it is for you to do. You need a community, and I have one for you. Join my ongoing Tuesday morning writing group from 5:00 to 7:00 AM Pacific standard time. We get together and we write together each week for two hours, and we spend most of that time really writing. Yes, that’s hella early for you, west coast Americans much easier for you, Europeans. But you can do it. You write with company, you get to talk to your peers about what you’re working on, and having that kind of support is invaluable. Go to www.rachaelherron.com/Tuesday for more information.
Rachael Herron: [00:05:12] Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Chanel Cleeton. Hi Chanel!
Chanel Cleeton: [00:05:18] Hi!
Rachael Herron: [00:05:19] I am thrilled, thrilled to talk to you. I loved the Next Year in Havana, and I just was like. that was one of the brilliant things about doing the show is I get to bring on writers that I love. So, fantastic. Let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London, and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. That is very fancy sounding. Chanel also received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Southern South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Well, welcome.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:19] Thank you
Rachael Herron: [00:06:20] So tell me a little bit about what your life looks like right now. Are you writing full time or are you, yeah?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:28] I do. Yes. So I’m writing full time, I’ve been writing full time for a while which- which kind of helps, keep up with everything, so,
Rachael Herron: [00:06:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we had to push this episode because illness has been going around in, and you’ve got at least one child.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:45] I do. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] Yeah. So that’s, I love talking to mothers cause I do not know how you do it. So, and that’s why we’re going to be talking about process, which is my favorite thing to chat about. How do you get it done? What is your personal writing process?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:06:59] It really varies by book and I will say, you know, it changes in terms of all the other obligations. I think that’s one of the things I didn’t really realize when I started writing is how much time goes into marketing and publicity and social media and everything else. So really it just depends on the book and kind of where I am in my life. If I have a release coming up, I kind of know that I’m not writing very much cause I spend quite a bit of time promoting the released or if I’m an edits, you know, sometimes they’ll push the book, that I’m drafting to just focus on editing, the one that, that I’m working on with my editor. So it’s really, I think kind of about flexibility, you know, working with the schedule, working with what your publisher needs, and also what’s above needs. I mean, every bump is very different for me. Sometimes I really front load my research, other times I kind of research as I go. It really just depends on, how much kind of background information I have on the story and, the time period or how much I really have to kind of get myself up to speed.
Rachael Herron: [00:07:58] And where and when do you do all that work? Are you a morning person? Are you a fit it in while the kids at school kind of person, or?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:06] I just kind of write as I need to, it really depends. You know, I was on, traveling and so my editor needed something and so I was late at night kind of working, getting up early the next morning. Sometimes I work during the day. I mean, it, it really just depends on kind of where I am. So it wasn’t really consistent with my writing process, I would say, I write in Scrivener, which I find really helpful and that’s, that’s probably the biggest thing I would say that kind of carries me through the different thoughts. But beyond that, it changes quite a bit.
Rachael Herron: [00:08:41] What is your favorite thing about Scrivener? And I also use it and love it.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:08:45] Yeah, I think for historical fiction it’s really helpful. I like that I can have all of my research there, so it’s easily accessible. I liked that I can kind of shift POV use, I do a lot of dual timelines or multiple POVs in my books and I like it you can kind of keep the scenes and then move things around quite easily when you’re going through the revision process. And I just feel like I really get a very comprehensive kind of macro look at the book I’m using Scrivener cause it’s all right there. You know, you can drop all of your research links in, and so everything is very easily accessible. Microsoft word, I use when I edit with my editor, but I feel like I don’t get as much as the high level view of the book when I’m in that. That’s really more what I’m kind of city and on the little details.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:31] Yeah, I totally agree. I color code my points of view characters. That is the best trick!
Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:37] It helps so much. Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:09:39] Because you’re like, oh! I’ve been in her point of view for five scenes and not in our point of view for, you know, forever until we had one, 10,000 pages ago, you know, or 10,000 words I go, not 10,000 pages. That would be too much.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:09:51] Yeah. No, it really does make a huge difference, to kind of have that, that ability and – and it does I think, give you like you’re saying, that idea of okay, this isn’t balanced here, I need to kind of balance this out.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:03] Exactly. And you could color code, like the things you have to keep an eye on. I have a color coded empty scene right now that says, change plot completely to here. And then I started writing forward with what I knew the book was going to be. And I know that everything behind that, you know, before that red line is that that’s going to be a lot of revision. Yeah.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:28] Yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:29] What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:10:31] I think all the other stuff you juggle. Definitely, like I said before, you know, when I started writing, I just didn’t appreciate how many different hats you kind of wear as an author. You can be a graphic designer, you can be accountant, you know, bookkeeper. It kind of goes all these different gamuts and a lot of times it’s stuff that you might not have a background in, so you really have to kind of get yourself up to speed. So I think it’s just juggling the time commitment of where do I invest my time? How do I kind of keep balance? And when you kind of get those last minute things that come on, you know, how do you shift that with the deadline you’re working on.
Rachael Herron: [00:11:06] How does that feel to you to juggle things like that? Because I find myself very resentful. When I’m like, Oh God, I actually have to spend time on these copy edits. You know, I really- I just, I, I forget over and over and over again that, okay, copy edits, you’ll get all these things coming in. How did, how do your emotions handle that?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:24] I think I’ve gotten pretty used to it now. And I think it’s just kind of figuring out, like I’ve learned that when I get copy edits, I cannot do two projects at once.
Rachael Herron: [00:11:34] I know. I hate that.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:35] So I know some people that will try to draft
Rachael Herron: [00:11:36] I can’t do it.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:11:37] My brain doesn’t work that way, so I have to basically clear my schedule, push through the deadline, and then I can go back to whatever I was working on. So little things like that have helped, my editor is really amazing at communicating and I think earlier in my career, I was very much like a people pleaser and I always wanted to be like, oh no problem, I can do that. You know? But I’ve kind of learned now they really want you to turn it in your best book. So if there’s something going on, I’ll just be like, Hey, you know, I need an extra few days and they’re really great about working with me, or, you know, I think I have a better handle of what time I actually need and my process for copy edits. So I can look at my schedule and be like, okay, this is a little tight, but I know I can do it cause I’ve done it before. So I think it just kind of is more about getting comfortable with it. I’m a really big planner person. I have a day planner, I like the paper planner. And so I really just am very careful about scheduling and I always kind of leave, probably about a month, I would say, in my drafting process that I know it’s kind of free days there are, are free days. Because I know I probably get proof, so I’m going to get copy, it’s on the book before it, and so I can kind of build in that time so I’m not scrambling. So I think it’s little things like that that helped
Rachael Herron: [00:12:50] You are much more logical than I am always scrambling at the last minute.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:12:56] Well, it’s not always perfect. So every day it sounds great. Sometimes life happens, but you know you could do it. But yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:03] Yeah. Are you with Penguin? Is that what I’m remembering
Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:05] I do. Yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:05] Which in print?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:07] Berkeley.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:07] Who’s your editor?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:09] Kate Seaver.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:10] Oh my gosh. Okay. Here’s something that I’ll admit because I know she’ll never hear it. But I have been wanting to work with Kate for so long. She almost bought a book of mine a long time ago. I was with Danielle Perez when I was at Berkeley. Yeah. I love Danielle. I love, I love all my editors, but Kate Seaver is my dream- dream editor. Someday.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:29] I have to say, she’s like one of my favorite people. Like she’d just been amazing. And I’ve been with her for five years now. We’ve been, no, I guess six, almost six. So she’s just like so supportive, really wonderful to work with. And I think it’s so nice as a writer when you kind of get into sync with an editor,
Rachael Herron: [00:13:46] Yes.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:13:47] You know, you have that kind of history and you know how each other works and it just helps a lot. So, yeah, she’s, she’s amazing. I, I highly recommend her.
Rachael Herron: [00:13:55] That’s awesome. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:00] I love the everyday really feels like an adventure. I mean, I’m, I’m not at all a plotter. I really start with like the shell of an idea
Rachael Herron: [00:14:07] So you’re a planner. You love planning like life, but not-
Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:11] Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:14:12] Okay, that’s really interesting. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of the combination.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:14:15] Yeah. It’s really odd with my personality and it’s kind of funny cause like on the business side, like I’ll come to my publisher with like spreadsheets with, you know, ideas for promotional plans and stuff. But on the writing side, I’ll give them like a paragraph and Kate’s really wonderful. She’ll just, she’ll be like, yep, yeah, she knows how I work and she knows I’ll figure it out as I go. But yeah, there’s something about my brain when I write. It’s kind of making my only like real creative outlet. Like I’m not artistic or musical or anything like that. So it’s like the one place I kind of, get to be a little bit free. And so, yeah, I think I just loved the adventure and kind of the unknown. I mean, my characters really surprised me and, and take me on journeys. So that’s, that’s really definitely the interesting part of it.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:56] That is beautiful, I love that. Can you share a craft tip of any sort with us?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:02] So I think because I don’t do as much planning on the front end, I’m a really big reviser. I love the revision process.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:10] Me too.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:15:11] Yeah. It’s, I feel like that’s really when I get to just polish the story and probably where I try to step back and not be as free and be really critical of myself. Then try to kind of think of what would a reader pick apart? I really liked the print out my drafts. So I usually do, I do a lot of revision rounds. My first round I do on the computer and that’s kind of like a high level of, you know, really cleaning stuff up. And then I do a round where I printed out and I added my hand with like a red pen. And I find that you really find, new and different things when you look at your book in a different medium. So that’s really helpful. And then I also like to read it on an e-reader cause I feel like that kind of gives ’em another different perspective and I really do catch different things. I’ve heard other people do like text to speech. So I think really kind of changing up the way you look at your book, whatever works for you definitely helps because it gives you kind of a fresh eye, which is hard when you’re so deep in your revisions.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:09] I love that. And I have this day right before I ever send a draft to my actual editor, not my agent or anybody else, but, my, my revised first draft -ish, and then my, the last time I’m going to touch it, I reward myself with like five or six hours in bed on the Kindle, just reading it as a human being –
Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:29] I love that. Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:16:30] – reading a book and it’s so fun. And you’re also using the highlight feature of Kindle to like mark everything that you would change,
Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:35] Yes
Rachael Herron: [00:16:36] But it’s just a fun to lie in bed and read your own book for the first time, you know, front book, you know, so, yeah, I love that. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:16:41] You know, I think, and I kind of mentioned this, but I just think writing is, I’ve been really fortunate that I kind of wall it off as like my little haven. So I do feel like it kind of is imperishable to my life. No matter what chaos is going on,
Rachael Herron: [00:17:01] That’s awesome.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:02] It was really nice for me that I can like disappear into a book and, and that’s just really helpful. I think it writing has definitely been like a sanctuary. If, you know, I’m stressed about something or I’m busy, you know, I can just kind of zone into my manuscripts. So I would say it’s almost the opposite that like it kind of is it affected by things, which has been definitely nice.
Rachael Herron: [00:17:23] I think you’re a novelist in that. Cause most writers I talked to their life is what gets in the way and freaks them out and then they can concentrate on your book, on their books. So you being able to do that I think is kind of a superpower.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:17:35] Well, and I think what I find too, that, and so maybe I should rephrase a little bit. I think that when there are things going on in the world that I have a reaction to, I’ve really been able to put that into my books, and I don’t know, just been kind of serendipitous that it’s lined up with the book I’m writing at the time, tends to be something that kind of lines up with something I feel strongly about. So it really can kind of come through in the writing. And I think I get to kind of use it almost cathartic leads to, yeah, talk about my feelings through my characters and have them kind of look at similar situations. So I think that part too, I mean, I wouldn’t say it kind of affects it in a negative way, but it definitely kind of opens up. For me to express myself, I think.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:16] Do you work at home or do you go out to write?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:18:20] It really depends. I, I will say my productivity is usually better when I’m not at home. Like if I go to a coffee shop, I tend to do a little bit better. Honestly, though, then it gets into like, I’m at a coffee shop ordering lots of coffee and, you know, it gets expensive. So I don’t do that often, but if I’m at a, like a, a crunch time where like I have to finish the books, sometimes I’ll just go sit somewhere for like 12 hours and write. So yeah, I really take it up. I mean, I was, I meant to know about prep and I was editing at the park, like I printed out my book and I was just like editing as I went, I was like, okay, this is good you know, well, we were like on vacation and I was in an arcade editing. Like it’s just, you know, you kind of do what you have to do. So it’s not always a pretty, like. Yeah, a vision I think I had of what being a writer was. It’s often just kind of messy and you have to, and
Rachael Herron: [00:19:12] Yeah, in an arcade, that is definitely the first time I’ve ever heard that.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:16] Yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:19:17] It’s kind of amazing.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:18] It was actually, not that. I mean, I was like, there could be worse. So yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:25] Okay, great. What is the best book that you’ve read recently? Why did you love it?
Chanel Cleeton: [00:19:30] So I always have a lot of books I have a read. So I’m going to give a few, I just finished Long Bright River by Liz Moore, and it’s amazing. It was a thriller- it was kind of a mystery thriller, but set, against kind of the backdrop of the opioid epidemic. And it was just a really interesting angle that I hadn’t seen being done. She’s kind of a very literary mystery writer, so it was really lyrical and beautiful. Reminded me a lot of ton of friends who’s a favorite of mine. So just really, and it really made me think about a lot of different things. So really enjoyed that, that was really surprising. And then one that’s coming out on March 10th is, And They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton. And that’s a historical fiction about Jackie Kennedy. And I read it as an arc. It’s this phenomenal. I’m really excited for her. I think readers are really gonna love that book. That one’s out on the 10th.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:22] Oh, that is very exciting. Thank you. I’m going to put both of those on my TBR pile. Speaking of TBR piles, can you tell us about your most recent work where they should put on their TBR pile.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:20:34] Oh, thank you. So I have, my next book is coming out June 16th and it’s called The Last Train to Key West, and it’s set in Florida in the 1930s and it’s Labor day weekends, and one of the deadliest, the most powerful storms in US history hit the Keys then and destroyed Henry Flagler’s railroad and kind of reef a lot of habits. There were a lot of world war one veterans who were down in the region working on, building a highway. And unfortunately, they perished, due to kind of insufficient mornings and they were supposed to be evacuated then there were issues. So it’s this really kind of a tumultuous time in US history. And I didn’t know that much about. And so it was really interesting to kind of research it. And I have three heroines that were down there. One of them is related to my friends’ family from, Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba and their lives sort of intersect, as the storm is coming.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:26] That is amazing and it addresses something I really, really love about historical fiction, is real events that I know you’re from Florida, so perhaps you’d heard of that. But I am from California. I’ve never heard of that storm and never heard about those men who perished. And that is fascinating to me.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:21:43] Yes. Yeah, I mean, I even being from Florida, I really hadn’t heard about it, and it was just hurricane season. I came across an article that mentioned it, and you just get that kind of spidey sense of like, I need to know more about this and that’s what I love about historical fiction. I’m constantly learning, and constantly exploring periods of history that I’m surprised I don’t know more about but it’s fascinating to learn about them.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:05] I cannot wait to read that one. I really looking forward to that. I love your writing. Tell us where listeners can find you.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:14] I’m on Instagram, @chanelcleeton. My website is www.chanelcleeton.com, and then I’m on Twitter, with my name and Facebook as well. (ChanelCleeton)
Rachael Herron: [00:22:24] Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this and I am just so thrilled to talk to you. Thanks for inspiring my listeners. So
Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:32] Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is absolutely wonderful.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] Yeah. Take care. Bye.
Chanel Cleeton: [00:22:37] Bye.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:35] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/
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